Framing migration in the Greek press; An analysis of the ‘Evros events’ in left, liberal, and far-right newspapers

Journalism. 2024. Vol. 25. No. 1. P. 158–179.

Kostopoulos C., Mylonas Y.

In this article we focus on one important event related to the Greek dimensions of the so called refugee crisis in Europe. This event took place during late February and March 2020 and is known as the Evros events that occurred when Turkey decided to open its European borders to the refugees. Greece responded by closing its land borders with Turkey, and by halting the asylum application process. The area surrounding the Evros River in Greece became heavily policed by the Greek police and the EU’s Frontex border police, further aided by various citizen militias consisting of Greek and other EU nationals. This research analyzes the newsmedia coverage of the specific incident through a qualitative frame analysis on news articles written by five Greek newspapers that have different political affiliations. The analysis then answers a two-fold research question: how did the Greek press frame the Evros events, and how did these frames contribute to the public debate around migration in the country.

Keywords: European Union, public sphere, racism, EU migration policy