Slide #1:

Hypothesis FL-26 is characterized as a Hispanic heavy district with 72% of the population identifying as Hispanic or Latino. The literature indicates that large Hispanic populations will most likely lead to more Latino-related issues covered in local media outlets. Additionally, 27% of the people in the district speak only English, which means that the majority of the people speak another language or are bilingual and given the districts demographics, that other language is most likely Spanish. Research suggests that based on these characteristics—the large Hispanic population and the language(s) spoken in the district— in FL-26, there will be more people seeking Spanish news in addition to English, which according to Abrajano and Singh results in the majority of the people in the district accessing news with more pro-immigrant sentiments. With this in mind, for my media content analysis, I’ll examine the coverage of the federal government shutdown and border wall funding debate in two local news sources, one in English and one in Spanish. I predict that the Spanish media coverage of the government shutdown will have a higher focus on the immigration relationship of the shutdown than the English media coverage of the shutdown because the English media wouldn’t want to alienate the native population, and thus will utilize frames that highlight the economic and/or security themes of the shutdown. I make this hypothesis based on Branton and Dunaway’s findings that support how ethnic context is significantly related to newspaper coverage of immigration. The results in his study showed that as the county-level percent Latino increases, the volume of coverage regarding immigration increase until it reaches a point, where it begins to decline. Additionally, I hypothesize that due to the distinct audiences that both newspapers are targeting linguistically, I expect the English media coverage to have a more negative bias present about immigrants, which in the context of the shutdown we can look at as support for building the wall. Furthermore, I predict that the Spanish media will have a more positive bias in their coverage of immigration (advocates against building the wall). I base this hypothesis off of Abrajano and Singh’s finding that when it comes to the issues of immigration, the content varies for English and Spanish news outlets, with more of a negative bias present in English news broadcasts and a more positive bias in Spanish news segments.

Slide #2:

Description of Data To test my predictions, I will use news articles published in The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald from December 11, 2018, to January 31, 2019. I chose these two news outlets, The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, because I wanted to compare how they both covered the government shutdown given that they are both targeting two linguistically different audiences. One targets the native population that could feel threatened by the high Hispanic/Latino population in the district and the other targets Latinos and Latino immigrants themselves. Both of these outlets publish daily in South Florida, and it’s particularly interesting that they’re sister papers because this will show more clearly how the different audiences influence not only how the government shutdown is covered, but also what aspect of the shutdown is being more emphasized in both of these news outlets.

To identify and gather the relevant news articles, I used the following search terms:immigration/inmigración, Immigrant/inmigrante, shutdown/cierre de gobierno, border wall/ muro, undocumented/indocumentado, and security/seguridad. The articles were then classified and characterized in two ways, by tone and frame in an excel sheet that I created to keep track of all the articles. Methodologically I followed a similar approach to Branton and Dunaway’s count measure of the number of articles published per news organization per month that focus on Latino immigration, but instead, I did a count measure of the total numbers of articles posted by each news outlets during the timeline I mentioned earlier and the search terms. Then, to look at the tone, I coded the articles with either a -1, 0 or 1, following a similar method to that one used by Florine Evans in “The Content and Tone of the Media Coverage with regard to the Refugee Crisis in Dutch Popular and Quality Newspapers over time.” The article received a -1 if the article favored a Pro-Democrat position on the shutdown, which more or less meant an article that advocating against building the border wall and for a deal for the Dreamers. The article was coded as a 0 if the article took a neutral position and/or the article was ambiguous and I wasn’t able to distinguish the position the article favored. Finally, I coded with a 1 any article that favored a Pro-Trump position on the shutdown, which more or less supported building the border wall. I decided to analyze tone as pro-Trump or pro-Democrats, which is kind of a proxy for a positive or negative view on the shutdown. To look at the frames, I categorized each article into one of four frames: security, economic, racist and human interest. A security frame noted keywords/phrases like better/stronger border protection, threat, crisis and dangerous. If the article focused on the impact of the shutdown on local businesses and funding of the border wall, it was assigned the economic frame. I categorized articles as having a racist frame if it spoke negatively of immigrants using words like the “other” or “different.” And, then a human interest frame featured a “human face” and/or tried to emphasize how individuals and/or groups were being affected by the shutdown like the “dreamers.”

Slide #3:

Results The complete data set includes a total of 67 news stories, 39 from The Miami Herald and 28 from El Nuevo Herald. First, I’ll look at the results for the tone of the media coverage. In the Miami Herald, the local news outlet published in English, 46% of the coverage was neutral, 44% of the articles supported the pro-Democrats position on the shutdown, and 10% favored Donald Trump’s position on the shutdown. In the Spanish news outlet, El Nuevo Herald, 57% of the articles endorsed a pro-Democrat position on the shutdown, 39% of the articles reported neutral news and 4% supported a pro-Trump position. I think it’s important to note that in both news outlets, the news was reported from an unbiased perspective in the majority of the articles except in El Nuevo Herald, where the tone favored more the pro-Democrat position. I think the reason why a neutral tone is prevalent is that a lot of the articles that I analyzed, I noticed focused on data about previous shutdowns, statistics and just facts and updates about the shutdown. Also, looking back at my excel sheet, I noticed some overlap in articles characterized as having a neutral tone, also having an economic focus. I think this is the case because data-driven information is harder to skew in one way or another, so the results lead to a more neutral tone. However, it is also critical to notice how in the Miami Herald there were slightly more articles with a pro-Trump tone, although this tone was the minority in both news outlets. In regards to the frames/themes of coverage, the results indicate that the most frequently used theme in both news outlets were the economic and human-interest frames. The Miami Herald, almost half of the time, focused on the economic consequences/side of the shutdown, with a greater emphasis on it than in El Nuevo Herald. The frame most used by El Nuevo Herald was human-interest as they focused their coverage more on the people being affected by the shutdown, specifically dreamers, immigrants, and federal employees. The security theme was used almost equally in both news outlets. The racist frame was used the least out of all the frames, but it was utilized twice as much in El Nuevo Herald, and from what I noticed as I gathered the data, it was used to highlight Trump’s negative attitude towards immigrants, mainly Mexican and Latino immigrants.

Slide #4:

Discussion and Conclusion My results support most of the claims I made in my first hypothesis. The results supported that the Miami Herald’s most used frame was the economic theme, but there was no support for my claim that the security theme would be more prevalent in the English news outlets given that it was used almost with the same frequency in the articles published by El Nuevo Herald. Referring back to the theoretical explanation that I built my hypothesis on, I believe there is some support here as well as to the behavior of the Miami Herald to support Branton & Dunaway’s claim that as the percent of Latino increases, the volume of coverage in English news outlets regarding immigration increases until it reaches a point of decline. I think the fact that most of the news in The Miami Herald is covered in a neutral tone possibly shows how a local newspapers in a largely Hispanic district with almost an even split in party identification tries to balance all of these characteristics not to alienate any group, because I mean their end goal is to make money. In regards to my second hypothesis, which focused more on the tone of the articles, there is support that in English media outlets there will be more negative bias about immigrants and in Spanish media coverage, there will be more positive bias about immigrants. The results showed how in El Nuevo Herald, more than half the articles published were from a pro-Democrats tone and in The Miami Herald, the pro-Trump position was favored more than in El Nuevo Herald. This aligns with similar findings in Abrajano and Sings research, although there was limited to television news segments. Overall, this research shows more evidence that the language that news is delivered in, given that it’s targeting a specific audience plays a role not only in regards to what content is covered by the news outlet but the tone and frame that the content is delivered in.

Representative: Frank Pallone

Congressional District: 6^th District of New Jersey

Party: Democratic Party

Immigrant Interviewee Backgrounds

As described previously in Assignment 2, a qualitative interview study was designed to evaluate how attitudes differ to news coverage of Latino versus Asian immigration. A diverse panel of immigrants were interviewed from across the district. Mrs. Sylvia Leong and Mr. Mahesh Shah represented Asian immigrants and were from the Asian population center of the district. Both interviewees, however, had different backgrounds with Mr. Shah being actively involved in local politics. Mrs. Leong, on the other hand, demonstrated little interest in news media and immigration politics. Mr. Victor Riveros represented the Latino voice and was also from a Latino population center. Mr. Riveros held strong views on the media treatment of Latino immigrants but not of Asian immigrants. Mr. William Halsey represented Non-Hispanic white Americans; he actively followed local and national news media but had neutral views on immigration.

Interview Script Description

In order to evaluate immigrant attitudes, the qualitative interview study was designed with a line of questioning that first gauged exposure and broad views before drilling down. The same line of questioning was used for every interview irrespective of ethnicity to maintain consistency. Each interview began with questions assessing exposure to local and national news, followed by evaluation if those news sources were fair and balanced in respect to politics and immigration. Next, the questioning would address opinion on the Latino and Asian ethnic groups, highlighting their work ethic and impact on American culture. Lastly, the questioning would strike at the heart of the matter, evaluating how immigration news coverage was perceived and affected political affiliation.

Anonymous Representative Quotations

All interviewees requested that the interview content remain anonymous. In accordance with the line of questioning, the quotations from the interviews did hit on all the major themes of news exposure, fairness/balance of news, opinion of ethnic groups, and immigration news coverage of ethnic groups. There was a high degree of variability in respect to news exposure with some interviewees following both local and national news regularly and others having little interest in either source. Many of the interviewees struggled to evaluate the fairness and balance of their news sources, alluding to news sources like FOX or CNN to illustrate bias. Importantly, all of the interviewees believed that local news was also biased and dominated by special interests. On the opinion of ethnic groups, the ethnicity of the interviewee played a major factor as expected. In general, Latino immigrants were perceived to be hardworking but unassimilated due to language and cultural barriers. On the other hand, Asians were deemed to be a model minority and integrated members of American society. Questions pertaining to immigration news coverage tended to elicit the most opinionated and vibrant responses. News coverage of immigration was vehemently criticized and, in many cases, equated coverage with the sentiments and words of President Trump. Although the interviews did achieved the diversity in thought, the disparity in understanding and language barrier did impact the findings.

Findings and Themes of Qualitative Study

The qualitative interview study did confirm the original hypothesis and reveal interesting sentiments around immigration politics in the media. Significantly, all the interviewees demonstrated a clear mistrust of the media at both the local and national levels. Many struggled to spotlight an unbiased and credible news source. I speculate that these results would be very different a few years ago. The emergence of social media, “fake news”, and media overload has perhaps caused everyday people to lose faith in the media. Without being prompted, many respondents also tied their distrust of the media to President Trump. As expected, there was also a clear difference in perception of Asian immigration versus Latino immigration. Asians were in general deemed to be more integrated and productive. As a result, Asian immigration was referenced positively by respondents. Latinos, in contrast, were generally believed to occupy a lower standing and be less integrated into society due to the language barrier. Although Latino immigrants were thought to be industrious, Latino immigration was also negatively associated with “crossing the border” and the border wall. Importantly, the immigration coverage of Asians and Latinos was thought to be unfair and attacking. The climate around immigration news coverage prompted many to retrench deeper into their personal political views and affiliations.

Slide 1: Evidence-Based Hypotheses

My research is inspired by the work of researcher Sofya Aptekar (2008), which assesses the political integration of Asian immigrants in Edison, NJ. My research question is: to what degree, and in what ways, are Asian immigrants and Asian Americans politically and economically integrated in CA 33? I predict that there will be high levels of economic integration because Asians are viewed as non-threatening to White people and thus can assimilate into White communities with more ease than other minorities (Junn 2007) and because the US systematically favors Asians for work visas over other races (Wong 2017). However, based on Aptekar’s findings that larger Asian populations do not translate to more political weight, I predict low levels of political mobilization through civic engagement activities like voter registration drives, public advocacy, protests, and voter turnout. Similarly to Mayor Choi in Edison, I expect Representative Lieu will not make immigration policy a top priority, especially because it’s costly to reach out immigrant groups that are less likely to vote (de Graauw 2008). Overall, I predict Asians in CA 33 will be highly economically integrated, but not very politically integrated. I further predict Representative Lieu will be anti-restrictionism but not actively pro-immigration.

Slide 2: Methodology

I conduct interview-based research by setting up phone calls with individuals who work in Asian organizations and nonprofits in CA 33. I begin by developing my interview questions. I reached out to Professor Sofya Aptekar at the University of Massachusetts Boston for the questionnaire she used in her research on Asian immigrant integration in Edison. She referred me to Professor Karthick Ramakrishnan at the University of California Riverside who developed the original questionnaire—Aptekar previously worked for Ramakrishnan as a research assistant and actually adapted his original questionnaire for her research in Edison. Professor Ramakrishnan kindly shared the original questionnaire he used to interview staff at immigrant nonprofit organizations, and I adjusted it to focus on Asian immigration in District 33. The final questionnaire I used is linked HERE (it is too long to insert directly). To recruit interview subjects, I googled “Asian nonprofit,” “Asian cultural organization,” and “Asian community organization” in California District 33 and emailed 22 organizations that turned up. Seven organizations responded with a staff contact for me to interview:

1. The UCLA Asian American Studies Center
2. The Asia Society of Southern California LA Chapter
3. The National Association of Asian American Professionals LA Chapter
4. The Korean Cultural Center of Los Angeles
5. The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council
6. The Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment (CAUSE)
7. The Chinese American Museum of LA

All but two, the Asia Society of Southern California and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, subsequently cancelled. My final three interviewees were:

1. Jonathan Karp, Executive Director of the Asia Society of Southern California
2. Miriam Jordan, National Immigration Reporter for the New York Times
   1. Coincidentally, Jonathan Karp’s wife happened to be the National Immigration Reporter for the New York Times; they live together in CA 33. I was able to conduct a joint interview with Karp and Jordan.
3. Recent Former Staffer in Representative Ted Lieu’s Office (Name redacted)
   1. Referred by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center
   2. This top staffer covered Lieu’s immigration and Asian/Pacific Islander outreach portfolios for two years before leaving his office for another job.
   3. This contact requested their name be redacted due to a continuing professional relationship with Representative Lieu.

Slide 3: Findings

Based on my two 45-minute phone interviews with my contacts, I discovered that Asians (both immigrant and non-immigrant) are not considered a sizeable portion of the CA 33 population, especially compared to other districts in Southern California. As a result, immigration policy and Asian community outreach are not top priorities for Representative Lieu. My interviewees agreed that Asian immigrants are not a strong political force in the district. They all stated that the most politically influential ethnic groups in the district are Jews, who make up about a third of the population, followed by Persians. District 33’s previous Representative, Henry Waxman, was Jewish and in office for forty years before voluntarily retiring. When Waxman retired, he endorsed Representative Lieu. According to Lieu’s former staff member, he certainly puts more effort into maintaining constructive relations with the Jewish community than the immigrant or Asian communities. My interviewees also emphasized that CA 33 is deeply shaped by its enormous wealth—it is the fourth richest district in the country. Because the cost of living is so high, undocumented immigrants are, for the most part, priced out of the area. The small undocumented population is mostly composed of students attending universities in the district (UCLA, Pepperdine, community colleges). Consistent with research conducted by Branton and Dunaway (2009), it appears the perceived immigrant threat is lower in wealthier communities. Lieu’s former staffer added that the undocumented immigration is a very “out of sight” issue for the wealthy, and the spatial separation from undocumented individuals makes it easier for residents to claim they support immigration. As long as isn’t an issue that is proximate to their communities, they can comfortably denounce restrictionism with the knowledge that low-income immigrants can’t afford to live in their neighborhoods anyways.

Slide 4: Conclusions

The findings from my interviews confirm my hypotheses and add missing mechanisms behind my predictions. First, I received explicit confirmation from Lieu’s former staffer that immigration isn’t a top priority for the Congressman and the district. I learned this is in part because there aren’t that many undocumented immigrants in the district due to the high cost of living. I was also told that Representative Lieu really doesn’t emphasize his Asian immigrant heritage when he presents himself. Instead, he focuses on his airforce service and commitment to strong foreign policy and veterans’ welfare (the largest VA in the country is located in the district). I received further confirmation of my hypothesis that Asians immigrants are highly economically integrated into white collar professions and higher education, but they are not very politically integrated and engaged. The types of political activity they do selectively participate in is far more discreet than visible. It takes the form of voting, donating, and meeting with officials rather than publically protesting, demonstrating, or advocating for certain policies. Lastly, I confirmed my hypothesis that the district is broadly against restrictionism. However, I discovered this is not just because of its democratic partisanship, but also because the perceived immigrant threat is lower in wealthy communities with low undocumented populations. In other words, it could be the case that residents would not support a pathway to citizenship if the naturalized citizens they theoretically support were capable of moving into, rather than being priced out of, their district’s wildly expensive neighborhoods.

Joseph Morelle represents New York’s 25th congressional district. Since 2013, the district has been exclusively comprised of Monroe County (which is centered on Rochester, New York).

My primary prediction is that Hispanic immigrants will not experience successful social integration. In this context, I associate success with a prevailing sense of belonging among LatinX residents in addition to having diverse social networks. On this matter, Viruell-Fuentes et al. (121) conducted a study to measure whether there were significant differences in social bonds and community support within Chicago-based LatinX immigrants. The researchers discovered that neighborhood Latino/immigrant concentration significantly forecasted an immigrant’s network size and community integration. Respondents who lived in areas with more Latinos and immigrants experienced greater social success. To apply this to NY-25, it is necessary to draw on the district’s demographic data. Approximately 9.1% of the population is represented by Hispanics. Furthermore, an identical 9.1% of people in Monroe County are classified as foreign-born. With respect to Viruell-Fuentes’ findings, this low immigrant representation signals that LatinX newcomers will be relatively isolated and have limited social networks.

To test whether immigrants experience social integration or not, I conducted qualitative interviews with key questions about respondents’ friends groups, their perception of local media coverage on immigration issues, and their awareness of stereotypes/potential barriers to social integration. These questions were designed to tease out trends in perceived social integration between a native and an immigrant. It was important to have both native and migrant perspectives in order to compare responses about immigrant perceptions versus their real world experiences. In keeping with this, the first respondent is a student at this university who hails from NY-25 and the second respondent is an immigrant from El Salvador.

The results were fairly consistent across the two interviews: a common trend of self-segregation emerged within the LatinX immigrant population, in addition to a lack of visibility for immigration issues. Although not displayed on Slide 3, there were a few more interesting developments. When asked about impediments to social integration for immigrants, the native interviewee pointed to an occasional language barrier. She made sure to stress, however, that the oldest migrants (baby boomer generation) were the most likely to have limited language proficiency, despite long term residence in the district. In regards to whether migrants have mastered English, she went on to say that parents “usually do” and that children “definitely do.” Her observations were highly consistent with the linguistic situation in Ronald’s family. His grandparents knew very little English, his parents are relatively comfortable, and he demonstrated mastery of the language.

All in all, the interviews validated my predictions about social integration with LatinX immigrants. Despite the varying perspectives featured in the study, it was clear that immigrants were relatively isolated and occupied their own social spaces. To improve this study, it would be necessary to increase the sample size. This would include interviewing non-Hispanic immigrants in order to flesh out trends in NY-25 that populations more broadly. Furthermore, the interviews were confined to asking about social integration when, in reality, there are many more avenues for such assimilation (economic, political, etc.) Gathering data on employment opportunities and voting participation would have been worthwhile, for instance.

Since the fifth congressional district of Minnesota is an urban liberal hotspot for refugee settlement in my research I wanted to measure refugee integration. In this paper I define integration as political activity, rights gained, and groups serviced who come back. I wanted to focus on the roles  on the role that non-profit groups and cultural groups (groups who are supposed to target one type of immigrants)designated to help refugees, play in terms of advocating for their refugee constituents.I also wanted to measure whether or not refugees would be as politically involved as suggested by Irene Bloemraad due to the privileges and rights afforded by their refugee status( which aren’t allowed to other non-resident/citizen immigrants). Rather or as suggested by Aptekar it would be a much more complex story where despite a great density of support immigrant/refugee groups and services integration doesn’t necessarily translate into political power. Since my congressional district like San Francisco is urban and has “a liberal political culture” I expected or predicted that the refugee nonprofits in my congressional district would at least be  politically active locally. de Graauw in her paper “ Nonprofit organizations: agents of immigrant political incorporation in Urban America” talks about the roles non-profit refugee centered organizations play into advocating for refugees on the local levels for urban cities like San Francisco without necessarily interacting with national or governmental institutions. I wanted to test how true this was especially since my district’s representative herself is a refugee immigrant.

My research contained of both short and long interviews with the executive director of one of  Minnesota’s biggest refugee settlement non-profits, Several small cultural groups the communications director of Minnesota’s Democratic party office, and a representative from congresswomen Ihan Omar’s office. My interviews with the communications director of the DFL(Democratic party for the 5th district ) and the representative the congresswoman’s office were the shortest interviews and I was encouraged to email with questions rather than call. During these calls I asked much broader questions about wanting to learn about immigration with the 5th district. My longest calls was definitely with the executive director and even the receptionist of Arrive Ministry the local non-profit that handles refugee settlement. During these calls I asked more specific questions about the demographic breakdowns of the populations they serviced and the ways in which they addressed different populations  needs. In terms of experimental limitations I really wonder whether or not asking more direct questions of party representatives would have lead to longer interviews.

However, despite the briefness of the first two interviews(5-10 minutes)  I learned that essentially even the dominant political party within the state defer most of the integration of refugees to Arrive Ministry the local refugee non-profit as predicted by Anderson. From the medium length(20-30 minutes) interviews with cultural groups like the United Cambodian Association of Minnesota I learned that again a lot of the work is deferred to the largest local non-profit. Although, these programs do have things like daycare and elderly care much of advocacy aspect of immigration services and even things like legal help are handled by local nonprofits. Now although there were a small number of groups who seemed to be vocal advocates for immigrant rights who had protest pictures on their websites, I wasn’t able to secure any interviews with them. That said my longest interview which lasted approximately an hour long was with Arrive Ministries executive director Bob oehrig revealed a lot. He informed me of the necessity and therefore informal advocacy for refugees. Due to Minnesota’s aging population the refugees that are resettled in Minnesota play a vital role in the local economy and Mr.Oehrig even went on as far as to say  more refugees were needed. His agency provides almost everything from necessary legal services to lessons on how to take the bus. One of the most important things that Mr. Oehrig pointed out was economic status when it came to civic participation. He said that while some refugees do come back and help and even go on to gain power within the district, he argues that most refugees especially first generation refugees face large economic burdens including sending money back home. Therefore despite the resources available to them, most simply cannot afford to be politically active.

From my research I can conclude that non-profit refugees in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district play a vital role in refugee integration in terms of providing them with resources as suggested by de Graauw. However, despite these resources being made available a lot of these refugees simply are not as poised to gain power as they should theoretically be as proposed by Bloemraad. However, they are not completely shut off from political power if they please to as suggested by Aptekar, evidentiary by some refugees like representative Omar gaining political power. Therefore from my research, I ‘ve concluded that non-profit organizations are vital to refugee and immigrant integration into my CD. However, such integration though it may lead to social integration , it may not lead to political integration or success not because of demographic or political beliefs, but rather because of everyday economic struggles faced by the first generation refugees and immigrants within my congressional district.

As was the case with Assignment 2, analysis of public opinion in LA-3 is made difficult by the fact that the foreign-born and Latino populations are miniscule (3.1% and 3.8%, respectively), and that the change in these populations is also insignificant (around 1% over 10 years). Thus, predictions made rely on examining the inverse of many of the claims made in relevant literature. The two sources used for prediction-making here are Abrajano and Hajnal (2015) and Hopkins (2010). Abrajano and Hajnal contribute two relevant findings here: firstly, that a large influx of Latinos is what triggers White ingroups (as compared to just a large Latino population), and secondly, that the mechanism through which anti-Latino attitudes develop is one of racial threat, where outgroup communities are viewed as a direct threat, such as through crime, competition for jobs, or burden on the social welfare system (2015). Based on the fact that there is a very small Latino population and very little growth, my first prediction was that the White ingroup would not feel threatened by the Latino population. The second relevant piece of literature is from Hopkins, who writes that hostility towards immigrants is again the result of two factors: national salience (e.g. from national crises like 9/11 or elite/media cues), and again a demographic shift with more immigrants (2010). There are many arguments to be made that salience is high today, and has been high since 9/11, and some evidence shows that salience has been particularly high since the beginning of the Trump presidential bid (Newman et al., 2018). However, once again the influx of Latinos/immigrants in LA-3 has been very minimal. Thus, despite high salience, I predict that Whites in LA-3 will hold generally neutral or positive views towards Latinos and immigrants.

The data used in this study was taken from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) conducted in 2016. The study is conducted by YouGov, through a network of volunteers across the country, and reported responses from 64,600. The study was conducted in two waves: one set of questions is asked before the election, and one set after the election. The chosen for this analysis include 4 from before the election, and 4 from after, though the timing is not analyzed – only the question content is considered relevant here. For this analysis, only White respondents were analyzed,  as the goal was to determine ingroup feelings about immigrants/Latinos. For context, responses to each question were tallied at the national, state, and congressional district level. The first set of responses stem from a single question, where respondents were asked: “What do you think the U.S. government should do about immigration?” Respondents were given several options and instructed to choose all the applicable options. Notably, not all respondents received the same options: a small, non-random subset received additional questions. This analysis only uses the common questions, so that hopefully the sample will be more representative. The four options examined are listed above, but essentially represent attitudes towards amnesty, border patrols, the DREAM Act, and deportation. The second set of questions, also listed above, measure attitudes towards race. Each of these questions had 5 levels of responses (strong agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, strong disagree). For purposes of analysis, these responses were grouped into agree, neutral, and disagree; some subtlety may have been lost by combining response categories but doing so made it easier to compare general trends across geographic units. The most directly applicable question of these 4 was “I often find myself fearful of people of other races”, which was used as a stand-in for a racial-threat mindset. However, it is notable that this question only asks about other races, and not Latinos specifically. Thus, any respondent who had feeling of fear about either Asian or Black people would also be grouped into this statistic. However, if anything, this should give an overestimate of racial threat response, whereas we are expecting a small overall response. The other three questions are not directly applicable to my predictions and are instead used to offer context for alternative explanations.

The first prediction, that natives in LA-3 did not feel threatened by Latinos, seemed to be corroborated. Or, to be more precise, they did not seem significantly more threatened than residents of Louisiana in general, nor the US at large. The second prediction was more difficult to evaluate.  Firstly, there was not a direct measure of public opinion towards Latinos/immigrants in the CCES dataset. Instead, the aforementioned questions on domestic policy were used as an analog for general sentiment towards immigrants in particular. The findings here were split. On the one hand, Whites in LA-3 appeared to be less amenable towards the granting of legal status than either the national or state sample (10% fewer voted in favor of amnesty, and 13% fewer supported the DREAM Act). On the other hand, Whites in LA-3 were less in favor of stricter enforcement (e.g. more border patrols and deportation of undocumented immigrants) than the state average, though still slightly more than the national average. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about the general attitude towards immigrants, at least relative to the rest of the state. But in absolute terms, the data would seem to contradict the prediction: a majority of LA-3 residents oppose amnesty for immigrants and support greater enforcement against illegal immigrants, despite the fact that there are hardly any immigrants in their locale.

The results of this analysis are somewhat perplexing, as we observe negative attitudes towards immigrants, yet are left without a mechanism that would cause this, as both racial threat and demographic shifts were not relevant. This poses the question of what causes anti-immigrant attitudes in LA-3. There are a few possible mechanisms that could be responsible. Craig and Richeson found that the salience of national demographic change could be pushing White Americans towards more conservative policy positions, including restrictionist/anti-immigrant stances. The mechanism proposed is that Whites may feel that their status as the majority group is threatened by increasing populations of immigrants/Latinos/minorities, and thus embrace policies that are more favorable to the ingroup. Notably, this mechanism would not require any direct contact with immigrants, meaning that it could still apply in LA-3. In support of this theory, Whites in LA-3 recognize the existence of racial problems as much as Whites throughout the US, but they are on average less angry that racism exists, and less likely to believe that White privilege exists. This could suggest some degree of indifference towards disadvantaging minority populations, including Latinos and Latino immigrants. An alternative theory would be priming via elite cues. A large body of research demonstrates that political leaders and the media can influence attitudes towards immigrants (Abrajano and Singh, 2009; Jones and Martin, 2017; Dunaway et al., 2010). While studies generally focus on the intersection of various factors (demographic shifts, distance from border, etc.) with elite cues, it is generally understood that to some degree people take on the views of their political representatives. In Assignment 1 I found that the Congressman of LA-3, Clay Higgins, was extremely vocal and consistent about his restrictionist stance. In such conditions, where the media and political elites may tout anti-immigrant policies, and there are few local immigrants to contradict this perception, it is not unreasonable to believe that Whites in LA-3 developed a negative affect towards immigrants using the only information they had available. While this claim is unsupported by empirical data, it is a promising avenue for future research.

Slide 1: This first slide outlines the hypotheses that will be tested for the project. Branton and Dunway, in their work “Spatial Proximity to the U.S.-Mexico Border and Newspaper Coverage of Immigration Issues,” find that an area with a Latino population of over 25%, then media coverage of Latino immigration will be less than a district with a Latino population of under 25%. They also find that the closer a district is to the U.S.-Mexico border, the more likely it is to have negative media coverage of Latino immigration (Branton and Dunway 2009). With this, the media sources being compared are a news media local to CA27 (Pasadena Star News) and a media source belonging to a district nearer to the border and one that has a lower Latino population percentage (CA52 – KUSI News). We thus hypothesize that Pasadena Star News should have less media coverage of the Latino population and should be less negative than that of KUSI News. Additionally, Abrajano and Hajnal, in White Blacklash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics, conclude that media coverage of immigration increases as the foreign born population increases. Since both districts saw a steady rise in immigration since 10 years ago (by at least 7 percentage points for each district), we can expect that there should be an increase in media coverage in immigration for both media sources.

Slide 2: The second slide primarily outlines the research plans and coding rules for analysis. The selection of articles will be from December 11, 2018 to January 31, 2019, as it will cover the entirety of the government shutdown. As most of the hypotheses focus on Latino immigration, most of the articles selected will be related to Latino immigration. Key terms that will be used to search for articles will include: “shutdown”, “Latino”, “immigration/immigrant”, and “border.” In terms of tone and attitudes of the articles, I will be inspecting word choices of the author and determining whether they point towards a specific emotion; for example, the sentence “there is an invasion at the border” constitutes as negative because of the choice of “invasion.” I will also be using an online tone analyzer to eliminate as much bias and human error as possible. To determine framing, I will analyze how the author describes immigration and if any analogies are used; I will also look at how the author frames immigrants (are they beneficial or harmful to society?). The selection process will be as random as possible. I will select articles that come up from the search results for each term and run them through an tone analysis. At the end, I plan to have analyzed at least 60 articles from the news sources.

Slide 3: This slide highlights the results that emerged from the research from the previous slide. Through the tone analyzer, I found that the most common tones from Pasadena Star News articles were “analytical” and “confident” and for KUSI were “sadness”, “analytical”, and neutral / no tone. Looking at the variety of media, Pasadena Star News had occasional political cartoons criticizing the shutdown and President Trump’s plans to build a wall, and its articles humanize and sympathize with immigrants. From this, I concluded that the tone of the Pasadena Star News articles / media was fairly positive and supportive of immigration and Latino immigrants. KUSI News, similarly, had a mostly sympathetic tone, as its most common tone was “sadness”, then “analytic”, and finally neutral. Ultimately, these tones do not point significantly towards a negative tone; thus, we cannot conclude that being closer to the border leads to more negative media coverage of Latino immigration. Furthermore, I calculated how many search results came up for Latino immigration / immigrants, and the results for both Pasadena Star News and KUSI were similar (30 results for Pasadena Star News and 25 from KUSI News). CA27 has a Latino population of 28% and CA52 has a Latino population of 14.3%. Thus, there is no sufficient evidence to conclude that areas with a Latino population of higher than 25% has less coverage of Latino immigration. Spreading out, analyzing all the search results for immigration in general gave an indication that there has been in increase in media coverage of immigration as immigration increases. However, the media has not necessarily become negative, as the tone of both media sources are neutral to positive / sympathetic.

Slide 4: The last slide wraps up and concludes the research on the slides above. Ultimately, the first and second hypotheses were not supported with data, while part of the third hypothesis was supported. Thus, the size of the Latino population and the distance from the U.S.-Mexico border do not indicate the tone or abundance of media coverage on Latino immigration. Perhaps the location of this study affects the results; California is extremely diverse and quite liberal and is considered a hotspot for immigrants. From this, there may be confounding variables that affect media tones and attitudes of immigration. There may be other, more compelling, variables that influence media coverage of immigration, such as size of foreign-born population and size of democratic party.

News outlets provide the public with up to date and reliable information regarding current events in America as well as internationally.  However, although news organizations are encouraged to convey information as matter-of-fact, the inherent structure of such institutions provide clear motives to produce biased stories.  When considering the media in the republican state of Iowa, it is imperative that we put their reportings into context as opposed to reviewing their stories independent from existing conditions.  More specifically, when analyzing the media through the lense of immigration, extant literature shows there is a tendency to exaggerate the stories in order to attain readers. As many news outlets are privately held entities, just like companies in other industries, there is a fundamental impulse to maximize profit.  In Regina Branton and Johanna Dunaway’s spacial-economic understanding of media slanting, they contend that news organizations release their stories in order to attain viewership and thus “news is produced in the manner that is most pleasing to audiences” (Branton, 259). In which direction this slant leans is dependent on one’s spatial proximity to the border.  However, when discussing the state of reporting in Iowa, although relatively far from our southern neighbor Mexico, I would predict their stories would cater to their republican citizens. Echoed through extant research is the understanding that party affiliation has the strongest effect on immigrant ideology. Thus, grounded in the belief that “Republican legislators are significantly more likely than Democratic legislators are to vote for restrictive immigration-related legislation,” states with republicans majorities would likely experience rhetoric with right-winged sentiment (Wong, 16).  The fourth district of Iowa, which has encountered multiple redistrictings over the years, has elected a republican representative since its inception dating back to 2012. Furthermore, Steve King has served as the incumbent during this time and has adopted far-right policies and beliefs during his tenure.  An avid supporter of Trump’s declaration for a wall, King was even removed from the federal Judiciary and Agricultural committees following his white supremist remarks. Having mobilized such a support base for nearly twenty years, and boasting the largest margin of victory of any district in the last election, King’s followers clearly back a similar republican viewpoint (Ballotpedia).  Although the 2nd district elected a democratic congressman, by a slim margin no less, the 1st and 3rd districts have republican representatives as well. In analyzing news articles from the the Gazette and and The Sioux City Journal (SCJ) I hypothesize that the republican majority across the state will result in a distortion of the media as it relates to immigration slanted in the republicans favor.  Furthermore, there may be a more extreme bias throughout the Sioux City Journal pieces than the Gazette articles.

To better understand this relationship between partisanship and media coverage, I will analyze the Gazette and the Sioux City Journal.  I chose these two newspapers to gauge the temperament of the Iowa population pertaining to the government shutdown and the debate between Trump and congress about funding for the border wall.  Across multiple websites the Gazette is cited as the most popular news outlet for Iowans to access stories statewide. However, this material may not be representative of the feelings towards this issue specific to King’s district.  Thus, I will also analyze stories released by the Sioux City Journal which produces the most read reports from the local area around Sioux City, within King’s district lines. Although cities tend to lean more democratic in nature, the SCJ should still give us insight into the 4th districts opinion on these matters.  During this study I will simply examine the top ten articles which I find while googling about the government shutdown for each respective outlet. While evaluating these two organizations, I set up some variables in order to quantify partisanship to some extent so I could more effectively compare the two as well as construe some larger meaning.  These variables include the frequency of buzzwords use to invoke a sense of fear or anxiety, the party affiliation of each respective reporter as well as those who are interviewed in each piece in addition to a qualitative account of the material at large. Utilizing these metrics, I will test the hypothesis that the party affiliation of readers influences the media to publish slanted stories.

While reviewing the articles released around the time of the the government shutdown, though both sides of the argument were acknowledged, there is a hint of republican preference among the stories.  Throughout all of the articles, both the Gazette and Sioux City Journal, journalists commonly detail the limitations this shutdown has imposed, citing the number of workers out of a job as well as listing the government agencies that are low on funding.  However, especially in the SCJ, reporters shape the issue as a common inefficiency of the government as opposed to being caused by an impractical stubbornness on behalf of the president. This news organization also shows a tendency to belittle this issue.  For example, while outlining the number of workers out of a job, Erin Murphy of the SJC reported that “Iowa’s leaders insist state programs are not in immediate danger” (Murphy).  Republican senate majority Leader Jack Whitver explained how they will continue to monitor the status of the federal government and the related issues “but [that] none of those [issues] has arisen to the point where there’s any action ready to be taken” (Murphy).  What is also interesting is the number of republicans and democrats who were represented in these news articles. For the SCJ, of the ten articles I examined, all but one exclusively interviewed republicans. In the one article they mentioned a democrat, it was in reference to Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that Trump is using the aura of the wall funding to divert attention from the Mueller investigation.  However for every disparaging remark about Trump, there was plenty of counter-arguments supporting Trump’s request for $5 billion dollars of funding and dismissing the imminent danger that the longest government shutdown in history has presented. In another article, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s tweet was quoted saying “Mr. President, declare a national emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW” (Lemire et al.).  The support for Trump’s eagerness to defend the border was also supported by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller in a SCJ story when he said, “we’re going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration” (Hayworth). The Gazette, while also pushing this republican narrative, did display a willingness to promote the democratic side of the story as well. Throughout their interpretations of the situation in the White House, they frequently displayed the disagreement between Trump and congress as a ‘national crisis’ and something that needs to be figured out as soon as possible.  In Nicholas Johnson’s article, he critiqued the Trump administration’s push for a large wall on the border and believed that they should focus on the cause of the problem as opposed to simply building a wall. In Mehaffey’s work, she quoted Ken Runde, the U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Iowa as complaining how “it’s unfair to the employees who have to work without pay,” shedding light to the real life financial struggles these federal workers were experiencing (Mehaffey).  The link between the politics of immigration and the struggle this shutdown posed to government agencies who struggled to serve people in need was made more clearly in the Gazette’s articles.

While reviewing the articles released around the time of the the government shutdown, though both sides of the argument were acknowledged, there is a hint of republican preference among the stories.  Throughout all of the articles, both the Gazette and Sioux City Journal, journalists commonly detail the limitations this shutdown has imposed, citing the number of workers out of a job as well as listing the government agencies that are low on funding.  However, especially in the SCJ, reporters shape the issue as a common inefficiency of the government as opposed to being caused by an impractical stubbornness on behalf of the president. This news organization also shows a tendency to belittle this issue.  For example, while outlining the number of workers out of a job, Erin Murphy of the SJC reported that “Iowa’s leaders insist state programs are not in immediate danger” (Murphy).  Republican senate majority Leader Jack Whitver explained how they will continue to monitor the status of the federal government and the related issues “but [that] none of those [issues] has arisen to the point where there’s any action ready to be taken” (Murphy).  What is also interesting is the number of republicans and democrats who were represented in these news articles. For the SCJ, of the ten articles I examined, all but one exclusively interviewed republicans. In the one article they mentioned a democrat, it was in reference to Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that Trump is using the aura of the wall funding to divert attention from the Mueller investigation.  However for every disparaging remark about Trump, there was plenty of counter-arguments supporting Trump’s request for $5 billion dollars of funding and dismissing the imminent danger that the longest government shutdown in history has presented. In another article, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s tweet was quoted saying “Mr. President, declare a national emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW” (Lemire et al.).  The support for Trump’s eagerness to defend the border was also supported by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller in a SCJ story when he said, “we’re going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration” (Hayworth). The Gazette, while also pushing this republican narrative, did display a willingness to promote the democratic side of the story as well. Throughout their interpretations of the situation in the White House, they frequently displayed the disagreement between Trump and congress as a ‘national crisis’ and something that needs to be figured out as soon as possible.  In Nicholas Johnson’s article, he critiqued the Trump administration’s push for a large wall on the border and believed that they should focus on the cause of the problem as opposed to simply building a wall. In Mehaffey’s work, she quoted Ken Runde, the U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Iowa as complaining how “it’s unfair to the employees who have to work without pay,” shedding light to the real life financial struggles these federal workers were experiencing (Mehaffey).  The link between the politics of immigration and the struggle this shutdown posed to government agencies who struggled to serve people in need was made more clearly in the Gazette’s articles.