By Mahsa Rahimi
At first glance, the answer to that question might seem obvious. A media outlet located in Europe might be expected to emphasise the political, economic, or security impacts of migration, reflecting the pressures felt by its audience and governments. Meanwhile, a news outlet situated in the Middle East, geographically and culturally closer to many of the countries migrants come from might adopt a more compassionate or humanitarian narrative.
But when we look at how Al Jazeera English and Euronews, two influential broadcasters from different regions, covered Europe’s migration crisis between 2015 and 2025, the picture gets more complicated.
Al Jazeera, headquartered in Qatar, has long positioned itself as a voice for the Global South. Euronews, based in France, presents itself as Europe’s independent multilingual channel. One might assume their reporting on migration would differ sharply, shaped by the cultural, political, and geographic contexts in which they operate. To find out whether that’s true, I analysed 870 news articles from both outlets, 229 from Al Jazeera and 641 from Euronews, using a comparative and quantitative approach. My goal was to uncover which frames dominated their coverage, what sentimental tone they adopted, and whether their geographic distance from the crisis influenced their narratives.
Same Crisis, Different Angles? Not Quite.
Surprisingly, both outlets converged around similar frames. Coverage focused on asylum policy, border control, and economic impact, framing migration primarily as a political and economical challenge. Humanitarian concerns were consistently secondary. In Al Jazeera’s reporting, asylum policy was the most frequent frames (253 mentions), followed by economy (227) and border security (193). Humanitarian framing appeared in just 82 instances. Euronews showed similar trends, with asylum policy mentioned 633 times, economy 593, and humanitarian aid just 198.
Even more unexpectedly, Al Jazeera’s coverage adopted a significantly more negative sentimental tone than Euronews. About 73% of Al Jazeera’s articles leaned toward a language of crisis, fear, or instability, despite its stated editorial goal of presenting migrants as refugees, not threats. Euronews, while still focused on security and politics, had a more varied tone, with 35% of its articles offering mixed or even positive perspectives, particularly when covering Ukrainian refugees or EU cooperation on rescue efforts.
Timing Matters Too
Peaks in coverage coincided with major events: the 2015 refugee influx, the 2016 EU-Turkey deal, the Belarus border standoff in 2021, and the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022. These spikes brought renewed attention, but often in the form of urgency, blame, or fear. For example, Al Jazeera’s tone became markedly more negative in 2016 and 2021, matching periods of geopolitical tension and shifting EU policies.
So, Does Location Dictate Narrative?
Not entirely. While we might expect a media outlet’s location to shape its editorial stance, the findings suggest that global media narratives are becoming increasingly synchronised, especially around issues like migration. Despite their geographic and cultural distance, Al Jazeera and Euronews both largely adopted a securitised, institutional framing of the migration crisis. This doesn’t mean location is irrelevant. Audience expectations, regional politics, and editorial identity still matter. But in a hyper-connected media ecosystem, where international outlets borrow language, visuals, and even tone from one another, framing becomes less about where you are, and more about which perspective you choose to elevate.
The Bigger Picture
Why does this matter? Because framing shapes public opinion and policy. When the dominant narrative is one of threat, pressure, and crisis, it becomes harder for more compassionate, long-term solutions to gain ground. When the voices of migrants themselves are missing, empathy fades. And when two outlets from opposite sides of a region start telling similar stories, we have to ask: Is global journalism falling into the same narrative traps, regardless of geography?
Note: This article is based on the author’s thesis titled “A Comparative Analysis of Al Jazeera versus Euronews Discourses on the Migration Crisis in Europe (2015–2025),” which used quantitative and comparative methods, employing Python to collect and analyse data from Al Jazeera and Euronews articles.
This article was produced as part of “MigraVoice: Migrant Voices Matter in the European Media,” an editorial project supported by the European Union. The views expressed in this text are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Media Diversity Institute. Any question or comment should be addressed to [email protected]
