A Discourse Analysis of News Values in BBC Reports on Refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan

Abstract: Ukraine and Afghanistan are two nations not unfamiliar with war, with thousands of their civilians fleeing the two countries. This study examines reports produced by the BBC and the use of news values when reporting on refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan. This paper aims to investigate which news values were used when reporting on the refugees and to see if there are any differences found between them. To achieve this goal, a discourse news values analysis (DVNA, Bednarek & Caple, 2017) was used where each report was color-coded and analysed with the help of linguistic devices. The results show that personalization and positivity were mostly construed in reports on Ukrainian refugees, while superlativeness, eliteness, and negativity were predominant in reports on Afghan refugees. Some similarities were also found, with timeliness, proximity, impact, and consonance being constructed in both data sets almost equally. Thus, this study shows that while personal stories are more common with Ukrainian refugees, human drama and numbers are more predominant when reporting on Afghan refugees.