Framing Immigration: Geo-Ethnic Context in California Newspapers

In 2006, millions of immigrants protested against H.R. 4437, a new bill in Congress that threatened to treat undocumented immigrants as felons. Content analysis of news coverage of the bill reveals that frames of the restrictionist legislation varied based on race and geography of the surrounding community. These results suggest that geo-ethnic context, which has been studied in terms of communication infrastructure within communities, should be taken into account when trying to understand how an issue is framed, particularly when trying to explain and predict why and when certain frames might occur.