How can we understand the success of certain migration narratives in traditional media and on social media in Germany? To answer this question, this Working Paper analyses three migration-related events across German newspapers and TV broadcasters, as well as on Twitter: the debates over taking in refugees from the Moria camp after a devastating fire in September 2020; the introduction of a new integration law in 2016; and the terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016.

This report uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis across the media covered, complemented by 12 in-depth interviews with journalists from traditional German media. The results show that newspapers and television reporting follows traditional news values in determining narrative success, almost completely excluding the voices of migrants. Twitter, on the other hand, tends to polarise debates, elevating extreme positions and scandal to the strongest factors determining the success of a given narrative. For migrants to be heard in either context depends on whether they fulfil hegemonic expectations regarding their positionality and on the frames used in their narratives.