Victim identity and political consequentiality: Framing migrant and citizen deaths in the Greek press

Why do mass-fatality events with comparable human tolls generate unequal political resonance? This article examines Greek newspaper coverage of two major 2023 tragedies, the Tempi train crash and the Pylos shipwreck, to assess how victim identity shapes evaluative framing, responsibility attribution, and political consequentiality. Drawing on a within-country comparison of three ideologically distinct newspapers, the study analyses how each event was narrated, politicized, and sustained over time. The findings show that, although both tragedies were covered within a broadly negative register, Tempi generated denser evaluative language, more direct attribution of responsibility, and more durable integration into debates over governance and institutional accountability. By contrast, Pylos was more frequently framed through humanitarian, administrative, or border-management narratives and declined more rapidly after the initial news cycle. These differences were patterned rather than categorical and persisted across outlets. The article argues that routine journalistic framing practices help determine not only how tragedy is represented, but whether it becomes politically consequential as a sustained object of public accountability.