The Threat of Terrorism and the Changing Public Discourse on Immigration after September 11

Abstract This article uses articles from the opinion-leading press to investigate how the news media's repertoire of negative portrayals changed after the September 11 terrorist attacks. It is based on a systematic random sample of 360 articles from two, opinion-leading newspapers—one known for its liberal slant (New York Times) and one known for its conservative slant (Wall Street Journal). The sample is drawn from a large population of articles published over a six-year period (1998–2004). The findings show that the percentage of negative frames involving not only terrorism but also other non-terrorist threats increased significantly after September 11. The elevated frequency of negative frames was found in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but the increase was significantly greater in the conservative periodical. Immigrants from non-European countries were also significantly more likely to be associated with negative frames than European immigrants. These three variables—national origin, news source, and September 11—were strong predictors of negative frames, even when controlling for other correlates. Suggesting an authoritarian turn in American political discourse, the study highlights cultural factors, as opposed to the conventional psychological explanations, as key determinants of the changing public discussion of immigration after September 11. Notes 1Perrin's study (2005) also demonstrated that "antiauthoritarian" scripts were also more common in letters to the editor after September 11. 2Maney, Woehrle, and Coy (2005) noted that their concept draws on previous cultural concepts by Swidler (Citation1986), Gamson (Citation1992), Tarrow (Citation1992), and Nagel (Citation1994). To this list of helpful perspectives, we add the concept of "national cultural repertoires," developed in studies by both Lamont and Thévenot (Citation2000) and Benson and Saguy (Citation2005). 3In 2002, President Bush suggested that the flow of immigrants from Mexico served as "a conduit for terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, illegal migrants, contraband, and other unlawful commodities" (see Office of the Press Secretary Citation2002, retrieved January 29, 2014 from http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020125.html). 4Lawmakers in Arizona passed a measure in April 2010 that allowed the police to check the documentation of anyone they suspected of being an illegal immigrant (see Gaynor and Schwartz Citation2010). In the new measure's defense, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said that it was necessary because her state "has been under terrorist attacks … with all of this illegal immigration" (see a video of Governor Brewer's statements online at http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/30/brewer-terrorist-attacks). 5See Gallup Organization, Gallup's Pulse of Democracy: Immigration; accessed online on October 5, 2007 at www.galluppoll.com. 6For example, the percentage of Americans who thought that "immigration is a bad thing for this country" increased from 31 percent in June 2001 to 42 percent in October 2001 (see Gallup Organization, Gallup's Pulse of Democracy: Immigration; accessed online on October 5, 2007 at www.galluppoll.com). For more on the post-September 11 increase in negative attitudes toward immigration, see Segovia and Defever Citation2010; Newport Citation2007; Jones Citation2007; Moore Citation2002; Panagopoulos Citation2006; Esses, Dovidio, and Hodson Citation2002; Nagel Citation2002; Woods Citation2011a, Citation2012. 7Taking a similar approach, Groseclose and Milyo (Citation2005) count the number of references made by congressional partisans to various think tanks and policy groups, and then compare these figures to the number of times that a given media outlet cites the same groups. 8To further clarify our definition of the framing nexus as a concept, it may be helpful to distinguish it from the closely related theory of structural intersectionality (Crenshaw Citation1991; Lutz, Vivar, and Supik Citation2011). The theory suggests that discourses of identity are shaped by intersecting patterns of racial, ethnic, class, and gender bias that become embedded and institutionalized in society. From this perspective, the American immigrant identity is not only influenced by longstanding prejudices against foreigners, but also a set of cultural understandings that place immigrants within hierarchies based on their nationality, religion, ethnic group, skin color, age, gender, and economic standing. The theory may lead to hypotheses about how certain intersectional identities—for instance, young, male Muslim immigrants from Middle Eastern countries—are portrayed in media. Although the framing nexus may be an especially helpful tool in such an investigation, it does not explain why a given news portrayal is likely or unlikely, how it is related to social structure, or what effect it may have on audiences. 9The dependent variable was normally distributed. We checked for multicollinearity and found that the four significant predictors in the model had very weak correlations with each other and strong correlations with the dependent variable. By adding these variables into the model one at a time, we also found that each increased R Square substantially. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoshua Woods Joshua Woods is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. His research has recently focused on perceived threats. He is author of Freaking Out: A Decade of Living with Terrorism. C. Damien Arthur C. Damien Arthur is now an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Marshall University. His research has focused upon, primarily, presidential rhetoric in relation to salient policies such as economics, institutional interaction, and immigration as well as religion. His most recent work has been published in Presidential Studies Quarterly and Sociological Spectrum.