Shithole Countries: An Analysis of News Coverage in the U.S.

This research paper studied the first two weeks after President Donald Trump allegedly called African countries “shithole countries” in a bi-partisan meeting on immigration. It explored the frames and emerging themes used by the media when covering the incident and the surrounding issues. Using the framing theory as a theoretical framework, the study examined the six identified news frames through qualitative content analysis. The six frames used in the coverage of the “shithole countries” incident are racial, conflict, consequences, morality, human interest, and policy. The study examined articles from four news sources that lean liberal, conservative, central-liberal, and central conservative. The study indicated that the four news sources all used five of the six frames, as the Wall Street Journal did not use the morality frame at all. The most used frame was the human interest frame, followed by conflict and consequences. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal used the conflict frame the most. And CNN and FOX used the consequences frame the most