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This master’s thesis gives an overview of the theoretical and empirical background on the phenomena of brain drain and brain circulation and researches whether and to what extent the media reflects these processes. It answers the question of what are the stories that media tells and how do people that participate in the process of brain drain and media content development perceive brain drain and its media coverage. In order to achieve this goal media content and expert – informant interviews were thoroughly researched. The research consisted of a media content analysis conducted on two hundred and twenty two articles that were published in between of 2002 and 2004. The content analysis gives an overview of the media coverage on brain drain, migration of workers and migration of students and consequently answers the six hypotheses developed at the beginning of the thesis. The analysis concentrates on the different reasons, effects and solutions to different forms of migration. It shows how the sending and receiving countries and migrants themselves are characterized, if any judgments are passed, who is criticized etc. Besides that twenty of the content analyzed media texts underwent qualitative analysis on the basis of grounded theory. This brought out the discursive schemes for brain drain, worker migration and student migration in the media texts. Further fifteen qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted and subsequently analyzed using grounded theory. That resulted in the discursive themes on brain drain and worker migration that representatives of brain drain, brain circulation, labor-movement experts, medical experts and journalists-editors carried on the subjects. The discursive schemes present the reasons, future prognosis, criticisms and solutions given for different forms of migration. Also whether the migration is seen as problematic or not is represented in the discursive schemes. The schemes based on the interviews also address topics as the reasons for returning to the home-country and evaluations of media. As a result of the analysis and theoretical background described above a model on the public debate on brain drain was created. This model shows that the events and topics considering brain drain reach the experts and employees of the media organizations via various reports by the EU and Estonian government, the world media and personal experiences considering the people who have left and whom everyone knows. Media employees turn to the experts in order to get additional information and commentary on the migration situation, but the statistics on the migration of skilled and non-skilled workers are rather lacking among the experts in Estonia. After retrieving what information they can from the experts the media employees convert all their knowledge on the matter into media content, which directly influences the public debate on the topic. The experts and issues considering brain drain also directly influence the public debate but to a smaller degree than media content. The public debate on brain drain comes about through creating meanings and discursive schemes that link it to certain themes. These discursive schemes in their turn affect the media and experts. The post- public debate influence media creates new coverage on the issues, this new coverage in its turn influences experts and so the cycle starts anew.http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b1738816~S1*es