Framing the Border as a National Security Threat: Fox News Immigration Coverage in the 2016 and 2024 Election Cycles
Jenny Xu
Rye Country Day School
While previous scholarship has established the existence of U.S. right-wing ideological media framing and its evolution over time, there is limited research exploring how influential outlets like Fox News have framed immigration across two critical election cycles: 2016 and 2024. These years represent key moments in recent American history, extreme-right-wing media narratives, and how that shapes public perception of emotionally charged topics, such as that of “illegal immigration” in the United States. This research paper explores the question: How has Fox News framed the U.S.–Mexico border and immigration policy during election cycles, particularly in 2016 and 2024? It argues that Fox News strategically frames immigration as a national security threat during the 2016 and 2024 election cycles. I conduct a content analysis of the language, guests, and visuals used on Fox News programming, such as Hannity, to highlight how Fox News deliberately intensified its framing of the U.S.–Mexico border as a national security threat to influence public perception and invoke fear. This paper contributes to the fields of media studies and political communication by providing a multi-year analysis of threat-based storytelling that Fox News uses to shape public opinion. It deepens our understanding of the interplay between media bias, national security threats, and commercial incentives.
Comments