Venezuelan Migration and Discrimination in Ecuador during 2019: An Analysis of the News Framing in Teleamazonas and El Universo

Abstract

This article comes of an ongoing investigation that analyses published news related to the Venezuelan migration in Ecuador during 2019. This research claims that mass media influences social behaviour by presenting facts that encourage xenophobic attitudes towards migrants. This study focuses on two communication theories: (1) agenda setting, which explains how the media selects and prioritizes daily news and (2) framing that points out how the media approaches the information. This analysis processes 256 news from two Ecuadorian media digital platforms: Teleamazonas.com and Eluniverso.com. Both media companies de-coded information in a way that created a position and shaped behaviours of audiences. In fact, the events selected as newsworthy highlighted Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador negatively. This study considers that this generates discrimination and xenophobia among Ecuadorian
communities that rejects and reacts with hostility against Venezuelan migrants.