Victim or Threat? : A Comparative Study of Media Representation of Refugees in Finland

Abstract: This thesis examines the media representation of refugees in the Finnish national news companyYLE by comparing media discourses from two different refugee situations. The cases comparedare the 2015 refugee crisis and the inflow of Ukrainian refugees in 2022. The material of theanalysis consists of YLE’s news articles about the two refugee situations. The articles areanalyzed with the help of tools from critical discourse analysis, and the results are theorizedthrough the concepts of securitization and victim-pariah nexus. The findings suggest that in themedia discourse of 2015 refugees were portrayed more as a threat, but the differences were not sosignificant as what could be assumed from the previous research concerning the topic. Thefindings, together with the theoretical framework, show that the 2015 media discourse representsmore clearly the traditional victim-pariah nexus found in previous research, while the 2022discourse represents a new discourse normalizing refugees.