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Visibility without voice: Media witnessing irregular migrants in BBC online news journalism

ABSTRACT In the analysis of journalistic representation of irregular migration to Europe, rather little attention is given to the variation of modes and genres of journalism. Most studies focus on text in ‘old media’ and the news genre. This article analyses affordances of different modalities and genres of online journalism in framing irregular migrants. Media framing in BBC online news coverage of a mediatised conflict in Spain, defined as a ‘migration crisis’, is analysed with multimodal social semiotics. While mediation makes global audiences witness tragedies at Europe's borders and online journalism affords more voice and deliberation for migrant sources, the frames of threat and victim dominate the news stories. Frames that depict migrants as surviving heroes who provide for their families emerge in feature genres.