Following the 2015 Paris attacks, public opinion on refugees drastically diverged in Canada and the United States. Whereas Canadians became more supportive towards taking in Syrian refugees, US...Show moreFollowing the 2015 Paris attacks, public opinion on refugees drastically diverged in Canada and the United States. Whereas Canadians became more supportive towards taking in Syrian refugees, US-Americans increasingly disapproved the intake of refugees. In the weeks after the attacks, the fact that one of the attackers entered Europe with a Syrian passport through the refugee roads initiated a global discussion on the safety of taking in Syrian refugees. Especially television news were of major importance in pushing this debate. Through critical discourse analysis, this bachelor thesis examined whether the divergent trends in public opinion in the United States and Canada could be explained by differing news discourses. The analysis found that the US discourse extensively focused on refugees as a potential threat to national security. Due to the fact the US had entered the pre-election phase at this point, the discussion on refugees was markedly politicized. Especially Republican presidential candidates were given plenty of airtime to comment on refugees, while refugees themselves were left almost entirely voiceless. In contrast, the Canadian news discourse discussed the crisis more from a humanitarian perspective, extensively covering philanthropist Canadians who were aiding Syrian refugees through different means such as privately-sponsoring, providing medical care or donating money, clothes and housing. This analysis demonstrates that the news discourses in Canada and the US were indeed profoundly different. This supports the theory that different reporting on refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks contributed to the shifts in public opinion in Canada and the US.Show less
