Framing politics in transnational communities: Spanish-language immigrant media and election coverage in South Florida

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published online 21 July 2014JournalismJuliana Fernandes and Moses Shumow

media and election coverage in South FloridaFraming politics in transnational communities: Spanish-language immigrant

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Framing politics in transnational communities: Spanish-language immigrant media and election coverage in South Florida

Juliana Fernandes*

University of Miami, USA

Moses Shumow*

Florida International University, USA

AbstractMiami-Dade County, Florida, has 2.5 million residents, with more than half (52%) born outside of the United States. Catering to these immigrant populations is a rich landscape of community media outlets focusing on the multiple Hispanic immigrant communities in this region. Drawing on the confluence of these geographic and socio-cultural factors, as well as the growing political influence of Hispanic populations, this study presents the results of a content analysis of election articles (N = 398) produced by four Hispanic immigrant media outlets in Miami-Dade over the course of a year. The results show an emphasis on covering elections in the home country, and contribute to the growing body of research on the increasingly transnational lives of immigrant populations and provide new insights into how these media outlets shape the coverage of elections that impact these communities.

KeywordsElections, framing, immigrant media, newspapers, transnationalism

*Both authors contributed equally to this work.

Corresponding author:Juliana Fernandes, Department of Strategic Communication, School of Communication, University of Miami, Wolfson Building 3002, Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA. Email: [email protected]

542743 JOU0010.1177/1464884914542743JournalismFernandes and Shumowresearch-article2014

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2 Journalism

Introduction

According to the most recent US Census data, Miami-Dade County, Florida, has 2.5 million residents, with more than half (52%) born outside of the United States (US Census Bureau, 2010). Of that sizeable immigrant population, one of the largest and most diverse in the United States, 95 percent are from countries in Latin America (overall, Hispanics or Latinos make up 65% of the county’s residents). Such demographics are increasingly reflected in other metropolitan areas across the country; indeed, Latinos accounted for over half of the population growth that took place during the previous decade (US Census Bureau, 2010). And, as demonstrated in the 2012 election, this population has increasing political influence as a voting group, drawing not only the interest of politicians, but special interest groups, Political Action Committees, and the media (Lopez and Taylor, 2012; Navarrette, 2012).

Catering to the diverse immigrant populations in Miami-Dade is a rich landscape of community media outlets focusing on the multiple Spanish-speaking communities that have made this region home, from Cubans, Colombians, Argentineans, and the rapidly growing Venezuelan exile community, to the multiple Central American communities that planted roots during the politically turbulent 1980s (Portes and Stepick, 1994). Lin and Song (2006) have argued that immigrant media are of central importance in immi-grants’ lives because ‘[they] preserve the cultural identity of ethnic groups by providing home country news’ (p. 363). Additionally, by preserving the mother language, media targeted at immigrants are a powerful institution that helps immigrants stay connected to their home country as well as adapting to the host country society (Lin et al., 2010; Lin and Song, 2006; Park, 1922). Undoubtedly, as previous research has attested (Guskin and Mitchell, 2011; Matsaganis et al., 2011; Subervi-Vélez, 1986; Viswanath and Arora, 2000) that immigrant media outlets can be considered a source of information to these communities and help them shape their views about events happening in their host coun-try as well as in their home country.

Drawing on the confluence of these geographic and socio-cultural factors, as well as the growing political influence of Hispanic populations (Lopez, 2010), the present study investigates the content produced by four Hispanic immigrant media outlets in the greater Miami-Dade metropolitan area. This research focuses particularly on community news-papers serving the sizable Peruvian, Venezuelan, Argentinean, and Colombian popula-tions as they reported on elections in their home countries as well as in the United States over the course of a year. Researchers applied framing theory to the political news con-tent under investigation as a methodological approach intended to more closely and care-fully contextualize the form and potential impact of the content being produced by the four newspapers. The findings provide insights into the ways in which these media out-lets construct narratives of transnational politics through their coverage of elections that impact these Spanish-speaking, immigrant communities. They also contribute to the growing body of research on the increasingly transnational lives of immigrant popula-tions in an era of rapid globalization.

Transnational migration and media

Beginning in the early 1990s, researchers interested in the study of migration turned their attention to the cross-national ties that have come to define the global movement of

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populations in the 21st century, often referring to this social phenomenon as ‘transnation-alism’ (Vertovec, 1999). However, as Portes et al. (1999) point out, the ‘back-and-forth movements by immigrants have always existed’ (p. 217). It has only been recently that these ties have acquired the ‘critical mass and complexity necessary to speak of an emer-gent social field’ (Portes et al., 1999: 217). This increasing movement and flow around the globe of people, capital, and communication is having an impact on populations in both the sending and receiving countries, with complex implications for both the forma-tion of identity and our understanding of changing spatial connections as an outcome of advanced globalization (Li and Teixeira, 2007).

The rapid transformation of global communication and media networks that has taken place in recent years has clear implications for the study of transnationalism (Christiansen, 2004; Georgiou, 2006; Karim, 2003; King and Wood, 2001). With its majority migrant population, and a media-dominated and cultural environment-dominated Spanish-language media and their audiences, Miami-Dade County serves as a perfect incubator for these transformations. For the purpose of this research, we are particularly interested in the role that mediated communication is playing in what might be thought of as the ‘thickening’ of transnational connections, because in a sense, this is what takes place as these publications cover news from multiple national contexts, with a blurring of ‘here’ and ‘there’ (as will be seen in the data presented below). And as this content is consumed in globalized contexts, such as can be found in Miami-Dade, there are clear implications for immigrant communities that may have strong bi-national identities as a result.

At the same time, immigration has almost always been tied to technological develop-ments. When considering the formation of transnational connections, it is essential to focus on the role of communication and media in helping to create these forms of simul-taneity that operate across borders. Adding urgency to this inquiry is the rapid growth of ethnic media worldwide in recent decades, the outcome of changing migration patterns (Georgiou, 2006), growing connectivity and increasing access to digital technologies and networks, the resulting diminishment of barriers to production, and what Deuze (2006) has called ‘the worldwide emergence of all kinds of community, alternative, opposi-tional, participatory, and collaborative media practices’ (p. 263).

Hispanic immigrant media and voting behavior

While there are few studies that look specifically at how Spanish-language media that cater to specific immigrant groups cover elections, there is an important body of work examining the relationships between Hispanic voters and Spanish-language media, par-ticularly within the context of political coverage and voting behavior. As editor of a rela-tively recent volume, The Mass Media and Latino Politics (2008), Subervi-Vélez, does a nice job of laying out nearly all that is known about the relationship between Latinos, politics, and the media in the second chapter of the book. In following chapters, contribu-tors to the volume focus specifically on the role of Spanish-language newspapers (Subervi-Vélez et al., 2008) and broadcast media (Alexandre and Rehbinder, 2008; Constantakis-Valdéz, 2008; Hale et al., 2008), examining the forms and manner in which these outlets cover presidential elections. Elsewhere, Subervi-Vélez and Eusebio (2005) have turned their attention to the role of marketing and public relations in reaching this increasingly influential group of consumers and voters. Of special interest to this study

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is the work by Soruco (1996) and his examination of the relationship between Cubans in South Florida and the mass media. As Soruco notes, both radio and the printed press in South Florida played an instrumental role in the political formation of the Cuban exile community over the course of nearly four decades.

Turner and Allen (1997) compared the coverage of the 1996 presidential elections in both the Los Angeles Times and the market’s leading Spanish-language newspaper, La Opinión. These authors found significant difference in coverage between the two news-papers, and in particular saw a lack of context and depth in the pages of La Opinión, highlighting the disparities in information that can occur within a single market. Following the political outcry from Latino political groups sparked by anti-immigrant legislation passed in various states in 2006, Félix et al. (2008) examined the use of ethnic media among protesters for political information and the organization of a massive May march. The findings from these studies highlight the importance of Spanish-language political coverage for these communities as an alternative to English language, main-stream media, in line with other significant studies on the field of ethnic and minority media (see chapters from Riggins, 1992). They also underscore the need to better under-stand similar relationships that may exist within immigrant communities that are con-suming content produced not just in Spanish, but also with an emphasis on the national and cultural identities specific to these communities.

There is also a sizable body of research investigating the voting behavior of immi-grants, and the implications for the study of transnationalism. Studies that have looked at the influence of immigration as a voting variable have found clear differences in residen-tial tenure as well as among immigrant generations (Ramakrishnan and Espenshade, 2001). Barreto (2005) found similar voting patterns when analyzing voter turnout during the 2002 mid-term election results in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California. In that study, Latino immigrant voters were significantly more likely to vote than were native US born Latinos. Both studies highlight the importance of considering immigra-tion status when theorizing voting behavior among these populations, as this factor can play an important role in not only whether or not someone is likely to vote, but also how they might vote on a particular issue.

Framing transnational news

As mentioned in the Introduction, immigrant/ethnic media have been found to play a key role in helping members of immigrant communities shape their views on events in their home and host countries. News framing provides a theoretical, as well as methodologi-cal, framework for better understanding how this process works. According to Gamson and Modigliani (1994), a news frame is a ‘central organizing idea or story that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events, weaving a connection among them’ (p. 376). Additionally, to frame is to engage in a selection process.

Entman (1993) proposed that media framing refers to a process that selects ‘some aspects of a perceived reality and makes them more salient in a communicating text’ (p. 52). Thus, when reporting stories, the media focus their audience’s attention on some salient aspects of that perceived reality. In addition, by framing, the media are able to construct reality by influencing interpretations and opinions about a certain issue or actor.

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Due to framing research, our knowledge of how the media construct reality and shape individuals’ views has been greatly expanded. However, we know relatively little about how immigrant media outlets frame their news stories (Grimm and Andsager, 2011; Turner and Allen, 1997). Understanding how frames are incorporated into the election coverage produced by these immigrant media outlets is an important avenue of research for at least two reasons. First, immigrant media publications have seen a general audi-ence growth as compared to mainstream newspapers (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2004). Second, the elaboration of a systematic analysis of the content infused in these publications can lead to important new questions about how these immigrant communities operate within the host country as well as how they stay in touch with events at home.

Because frames in the news can shape how individuals perceive the world, the con-stant analysis of news coverage is paramount. In particular, the analysis of coverage of election campaigns seems to be of fundamental importance since most of what we know about candidates, policy issues, and the electoral process comes from information obtained from the media. Consequently, depending on how the information is presented by the media, one set of interpretations and opinions about an issue or event is more likely to influence how we evaluate political candidates, for instance. On that note, although a great deal of research has been done to investigate how mainstream newspa-pers and television networks cover elections, other than the literature cited above, little is known about how immigrant media outlets cover elections.

Given the issues outlined above regarding the complexities of migration in the 21st century, the growing ability of migrants to live with ‘a foot in both worlds’, as well as the importance that news frames can play in the shaping of election coverage and the rela-tively little that is known about how this process plays out on the pages of ethnic news-papers targeted at immigrant communities, the following research questions are at the core of the present investigation:

RQ1. Is the primary geographic focus of these immigrant newspapers home or host country?RQ2. What is the primary geographic focus of these immigrant newspapers when covering elections?RQ3. What are the most prevalent frames used by these outlets when covering elec-tions and are there differences in framing whether the story focused on the home or host country?RQ4. Does the framing of elections in these outlets focus on issues central to the elec-tion or is the coverage more focused on strategies for winning, who’s leading in the polls, the latest political scandal, personal qualities of the candidates, and so on?

Method

To answer these research questions, a quantitative content analysis focused on Spanish-language immigrant newspapers was conducted. There are several well-established Spanish-language dailies in the geographic area of interest, most notably El Nuevo Herald (ENH; the Spanish-language sister publication of The Miami Herald), and Diario

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Las Américas (the oldest Spanish-language newspaper in South Florida, in publication since 1953). Both papers have historically tended to focus a large part of their immigra-tion coverage on Cuba and the Cuban diaspora, while more recently including other prominent and growing Spanish-speaking countries (e.g. the masthead on the ENH web-site indicates that the site includes news on Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia). However, for the purpose of this study and the emphasis on the framing of election coverage as a means for better understanding transnational activity, the researchers were interested only in publications with a specific immigrant (and thus geographic) focus, as indicated by the kind of publication (free, tabloid style layout) and the clear markers of a national focus (either in the name, as in the case of El Peruanísimo, or the use of the colors of the flag – América Hoy very prominently displays the colors of the Argentine flag).

Four immigrant print media publications that circulate in the county of Miami-Dade, Florida, were selected for analysis. These tabloid-format newspapers are published in Spanish and target immigrant communities from several Latin American countries liv-ing in Miami: Argentina (América Hoy, a weekly newspaper), Colombia (El Colombiano, a weekly newspaper), Peru (El Peruanísimo, a biweekly newspaper), and Venezuela (El Venezolano, a weekly newspaper). The time frame analyzed ranged from March 2010 to March 2011. The researchers wanted to provide a snapshot of the typical coverage of these outlets that was as accurate, up to date, and comprehensive as possible, and thus selected the most recent year’s worth of coverage available at the time the project was initiated. Additionally, there was also plenty of political activity during the time period selected to ensure a broad array of political coverage: the 2010 mid-term elections in the United States, including congressional races for several seats in Florida, as well as the governorship; a successful mayoral recall campaign in Miami-Dade County and the election for the vacant seat that resulted; presidential races in both Peru and Colombia; a constitutional referendum in Venezuela; as well as a number of local elections in Argentina. The 4 immigrant groups served by the publications chosen are among the top 11 most populous immigrant groups in Miami-Dade County, according to the data for 2010 from the 3-year estimates of the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (see Table 1). With a combined population of 182,000, the 4 immigrant groups account for nearly 14 percent of the 1.3 million foreign-born residents who live in Miami-Dade County.

All four newspapers are distributed for free in restaurants, groceries stores, gas sta-tions, banks, and retail outlets throughout Miami-Dade. According to their publishers, they have a combined monthly distribution of nearly 500,000 copies1 (see Table 2). And while there are certainly larger immigrant groups in the Miami-Dade metro area – for instance, Mexicans and Dominicans, both of which have larger numbers than the groups chosen – neither of these groups has a publication aimed specifically at them as an immi-grant audience. As a second example, Nicaraguans, another large immigrant group, do have a newspaper that caters to their community – La Estrella de Nicaragua, which has been in publication for several decades. However, there was not a significant number of articles covering elections to merit including the paper in this particular study.

While this is not a study focused on the sociology of journalism or the political econ-omy of the immigrant press, a final note should be made about the ownership and ideo-logical leanings of these outlets, as this will play a prominent role in some of the findings

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outlined below. These publications are free, tabloid style newspapers, and do not follow closely North American journalistic standards regarding impartiality and objectivity. Some of these outlets have very clearly defined audiences with often well-known ideo-logical and political leanings (e.g. the Venezuelan community in South Florida was nearly 100 percent opposed to the administrations of Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela who was still alive at the time of this research). In other cases, as with the outlets focused on the Argentinean immigrant community, there is more of a focus on sports, and in particular futból (soccer), an unsurprising outcome given the country’s dedication to the sport. These culturally specific tendencies and built-in editorial posi-tions play a significant role in the ways in which these outlets cover the issue of politics, as will be seen in the findings discussed below.

Once the electronic versions of the publications were gathered,2 the authors and two graduate assistants pre-screened each issue of the four publications for election stories (n = 368). It was determined that any story that mentioned elections, the electoral pro-cess, and political candidates, in either the home country (i.e. Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela), host country (i.e. United States), or any other country should be considered an election story and consequently it would be included in the final collection of articles being analyzed. Therefore, our unit of analysis was each news story.

Content categories

Each news story was coded for basic newspaper characteristics (e.g. publication name, page numbers, article date, front page article, byline identification). An important varia-ble in the study was geographic focus, since these publications are produced in the United States, but offer information about the home countries. To determine the geographic focus for each story, coders could select a local focus (Miami-Dade County/South

Table 1. Immigrant populations in Miami-Dade County (Florida), ACS2010.

Country Population

Cuba 590,906Colombia 87,941Nicaragua 85,651Haiti 74,272Honduras 47,655Venezuela 39,186Dominican Republic 35,476Peru 31,477Jamaica 27,260Mexico 26,728Argentina 23,300

It is worth noting that there are also 102,468 Puerto Ricans in Miami-Dade County. However, as residents of a commonwealth of the United States, Puerto Ricans are not immigrants, but they are a large Spanish-speaking community in the county, and therefore should be considered at least to some extent a part of the audience for the media outlets under investigation.

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Florida), state focus (stories about Florida, excluding local focus), national focus (stories about other states in the United States), or international focus (stories about other coun-tries, but including the home countries). To further investigate the geographic scope of the story, when international focus was selected, coders had to identify whether the story was about one of the home countries, another country from Latin America or the Caribbean, or any other country.

Next, coding was done for the presence or absence of several news frames, using specific frames encountered in previous studies examining elections (Capella and Jamieson, 1997; Stromback and Dimitrova, 2006; Stromback and Van Aelst, 2010; Williams et al., 2008). Coders were asked to code for the presence or absence of the fol-lowing frames: (1) issue frame: an issue/policy frame would be a story centered on an existing, possible, or proposed policy or issue proposed for consideration; (2) strategy/game/horserace frame: discussion of polls, campaign tactics, who’s winning, and who’s losing; (3) scandal frame: sensational coverage of gaffes, immoral, questionable, or ille-gal professional or personal behavior; (4) media frame: praise or criticism of media cov-erage, interactions or relationships between journalists and politicians, and how political actors try to shape the news; and (5) personalization frame: coverage into the private or personal lives of actor(s), qualities, traits, or image of actor(s), opinions and statements of individuals rather than parties. Because of the nature of these publications, a sixth frame was included: constitution frame. This frame does not focus on particular candi-dates or policies, but focuses more broadly on the rights of voters, the constitutional right given to voters, and the overall strength or weaknesses of the country’s democracy as a whole. In essence, this frame reflects the cultural and national contexts carried over from the countries of origin.

Coding process

Two native Spanish speakers served as the coders for this project. A training session was conducted before the reliability and main coding started. In this session, coders had the opportunity to study the content categories and clarify any questions. The two coders co-coded 10 percent of the articles, resulting in an average agreement of 91.8 percent and range of agreement between 71.4 and 100 percent. Based on similar studies, Scott’s Pi was used to assess reliability accounting for chance agreement and resulted in an average coefficient of agreement of 0.78. Intercoder reliability was calculated using the online software ReCal.3 Because the level of agreement was considered satisfactory, the articles

Table 2. Monthly distribution for publications.

Publication Distribution

El Peruanísimo 100,000El Colombiano 72,000El Venezolano 144,000América Hoy 180,000Total 496,000

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were divided equally between the coders. The coders utilized a codebook that contained a detailed explanation of all content categories previously mentioned. The coders used a customized electronic coding interface4 for both reliability and main coding, with news articles appearing in a web browser alongside the code sheet. This system eliminated data entry error by automatically transferring it into a relational database and helped to reduce coder error by having options and categories presented as labels and appearing conditionally, with the system automatically converting selections into numerical values after each submission.

Characteristics of articles analyzed

A total of 368 stories were analyzed, where El Venezolano had the most stories (n = 145) followed by América Hoy (n = 99), El Peruanísimo (n = 84), and El Colombiano (n = 40). Of the 368 stories, only 47 were covered on the front page of the publications, and 65.8 percent did not contain byline information whereas 34 percent of the stories had the author identified by name. Of all the stories, only one (0.3%) was from a wire news service.

Results

In an attempt to better understand the transnational character of the election coverage carried by the immigrant outlets under investigation, our first question investigated the primary geographic focus of the articles analyzed. As Table 3 shows, the primary geo-graphic focus across all of these immigrant publications is International, which by defini-tion includes stories about elections in the home country of the publications’ audience. Of the 368 news stories coded, 273 (74.2%) had an International focus. Although all four publications had a majority of stories with an International focus, it is important to note that América Hoy, a publication directed at the Argentine community, had a somewhat

Table 3. Geographic and election focus by publication (%).

América Hoy (n = 99)

El Colombiano (n = 40)

El Peruanísimo (n = 84)

El Venezolano (n = 145)

Total

Geographic focus Local 18.2 2.5 8.3 13.1 12.2 State 17.2 2.5 0.0 2.1 5.7 National 16.2 7.5 0.0 6.9 7.9 International 48.5 87.5 91.7 77.9 74.2Total 100 100 100 100 n = 368Election focus Home country 25.3 87.5 94.0 67.6 64.4 Host country 56.6 10.0 4.8 17.2 24.2 Other country 18.2 2.5 1.2 15.2 11.4Total 100 100 100 100 n = 368

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more evenly distributed geographic coverage when compared to the other three publica-tions. For example, 18.2 percent of the stories on América Hoy were dedicated to the coverage of local stories (i.e. Miami-Dade/South Florida), while the other three newspa-pers combined had less than 25 percent local stories. To further explore the geographic focus, we investigated how many of those stories with an International focus had an emphasis on the home country. The results reveal that among those stories with an International focus, 83.2 percent were dedicated to home country stories while 16.8 per-cent were not (see Figure 1).

The second research question asked whether there are differences among the different newspapers when covering either home or host country elections. As Table 3 shows, El Peruanísimo (94%), El Colombiano (87.5%), and El Venezolano (67.6%) all emphasized their coverage on stories about the home country, as opposed to América Hoy (25.3%), which focused on the elections of the host country.

Research question 3 looked at the existence or absence of a set of election-oriented news frames, and an analysis of the percentage of frames used by each individual pub-lication to get a clearer picture of how and under what circumstances they were being used. Let’s start with the strategy frame. As Table 4 shows, all newspapers but El Venezolano used the strategy frame in 60 percent or more of their coverage, as com-pared to 38.6 percent used by El Venezolano. The personalization frame, which deals with the coverage of the private or personal lives of candidates, their qualities, traits, or image, and their opinions and statements, was used in less than 50 percent of the stories across all publications. Our third frame, constitution, which refers to the constitutional right given to voters and the overall strength or weakness of the country’s democracy revealed that this frame was more dominant in El Venezolano, where it was present in 58.6 percent of the stories in El Venezolano, while the other three newspapers had approximately 30 percent of their stories containing the same frame. The remaining three frames, scandal, issue, and media, were seen less often across all four publications as shown in Table 4.

58.3%

97.1% 97.4%

79.6% 83.20%

41.7%

2.9% 2.6%

20.4% 16.8%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

America Hoy

El Colombiano

El Peruanisimo

El Venezolano

All Publications

Per

cent

age

of H

ome

Cou

ntry

Sto

ries

Yes

No

Figure 1. Election stories focused on the home country by publication.

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Fernandes and Shumow 11

Given that the strategic frame was the most frequently used across the publications, we conducted a trivariate crosstabulation, which allowed us to see in which instances the publications were using more or less of this frame. As Table 5 displays, the strategy frame was more common in stories about the home country elections in América Hoy (84%, home vs 64.3%, host) and El Venezolano (34.7%, home vs 32%, host) as com-pared to stories about the host country. El Colombiano and El Peruanísimo, on the other hand, had more strategic stories about the host country (75% each) than the home coun-try (57.1% and 65.8%, respectively) elections as seen in Table 5. However, the number of articles for the host country cells was quite small and this finding should be taken with precaution.

The final result worth mentioning (RQ4) is the overall limited use of the issue frame in the news coverage of the home countries’ elections (Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela). As stated previously, overall, the issue frame – which, based on previous studies, is the frame that would most likely help audiences better understand the core debates and arguments underlying an election – was the second least used in these pub-lications. When we separate the articles by the election focus, home versus host country, the results show that only 16 percent of the home country stories used the issue frame, as opposed to 40 percent of the stories focused on the host country (see Table 6). When analyzing the overall use of the issue frame by publication, El Venezolano (20.4%) and El Colombiano (20%) used this frame more than America Hoy (12%) and El Peruanísimo (10.1%) did. However, the absolute number of stories containing the issue frame was

Table 4. Presence of news framing by publication (%).

Frame América Hoy (n = 99)

El Colombiano (n = 40)

El Peruanísimo (n = 84)

El Venezolano (n = 145)

Total

Strategy 69.7 60.0 66.7 38.6 55.7Personalization 43.4 30.0 31.2 34.5 35.9Constitution 9.1 12.5 4.8 58.6 28.0Scandal 16.2 37.5 22.6 29.7 25.3Issue 33.3 20.0 10.7 21.4 22.0Media 10.1 20.0 10.7 7.6 10.3n = 368

Table 5. Presence of strategy frame by publication and election focus (%).

América Hoy (n = 81)

El Colombiano (n = 39)

El Peruanísimo (n = 83)

El Venezolano (n = 123)

Total

Home country 84.0 57.1 65.8 34.7 53.6 n = 237Host country 64.3 75.0 75.0 32.0 56.2 n = 89n = 326

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12 Journalism

very small. Although further research is needed to find any concrete answers, this finding may be that because these publications have a tabloid format, a focus on strategy as opposed to issue dominates. More interestingly, and concurrent with a tabloid-format newspaper logic, frames such as personalization and scandal are more often seen in the election news coverage than the issue frame.

The constitution frame was more frequent in home country election stories (n = 70; 71.4%) in El Venezolano than in host country election stories (possible reasons for this finding are discussed below). The three other newspapers did not use this frame as much for both home and host country election stories. Similarly, the other three frames, person-alization, scandal, and media, had very few cases, making comparisons difficult.

General discussion

There are two avenues for highlighting the contributions of this research: first, for the study of transnationalism and second, for understanding the role framing may play in the thickening of differentiated transnational connections through mediated communication aimed at immigrant communities. One of the main results to emerge out of this study is the preponderance of home-country focus these publications have when they cover elec-tions. At first glance, it should not come as a surprise that these media outlets, with their clear focus on particular immigrant communities, tend to focus more heavily on events at home than in the host country. However, scholars in this field have urged researchers to look carefully not just at the existence of cross-border connections that contribute to the simultaneity that is an increasing hallmark of immigrant life in an era of globalization (clear to anyone that might pick up one of these publications), but to find avenues of investigation that ‘turn the concept of transnationalism into a clearly defined and meas-urable object of research’ (Portes et al., 1999: 218).

Although the tabloids studied for this research may represent only a narrow slice of the immigrant experience and the potential formation of transnational identities, the results point to a group of media outlets that are clearly transnational in scope. When considering the distribution numbers provided by the publishers, this research opens up interesting new avenues of investigation for looking more closely at the influence on the political perceptions found in the communities of immigrants they serve. The rapid growth that the four communities in question have seen in the past decade (Venezuelan, Colombian, Argentinean, and Peruvian populations in South Florida have all seen

Table 6. Strategy and issue frame use by election focus (%).

Frame Election focus

Home countries (n = 237) Host country (n = 89) Total

Strategy 53.6 56.2 54.3 n = 326Issue 16.0 40.4 22.7 n = 326

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Fernandes and Shumow 13

40 percent+ growth in the previous 10 years) also highlights the importance of expand-ing on Spanish-language media research that has been carried out previously in South Florida, the majority of which has focused on the economically, politically, and cultur-ally dominant Cuban community.

The second important aspect of this research reveals how these immigrant publica-tions framed elections in both their home countries and their host country as a way of not only measuring the frequency of this coverage, which is always part of the picture when it comes to the study of mediated content, but also its form and character. We expected that the strategy frame would be very prevalent across the stories analyzed, as revealed by previous framing research on tabloids (Stromback and Van Aelst, 2010), and it was. Interestingly, however, the Venezuelan publication did not follow this norm. Given the political situation in Venezuela and the polarization of society and the media that pres-ently exists (Human Rights Watch, 2008; Romero, 2007) as well as the oppositional make-up of the Venezuelan immigrant community in Miami-Dade (Ocando, 2007; Semple, 2008), this finding makes sense. A strategy frame indicates that there is some question as to who will win, using what tactics, and so on. However, as has been reported elsewhere (Human Rights Watch, 2008; Romero, 2007), the Venezuelan opposition media were generally much more focused on toppling President Chávez when he was still alive and in power and highlighting the democratic and constitutional abuses carried out by his government.

As detailed in the ‘Methods’ section, we included a sixth frame – constitution. Because we had to pre-screen all of the issues from all four publications included in the analysis in order to select for those articles whose focus was elections, the common topic of ‘voter rights/constitutional rights’ seemed to permeate the election stories and we decided that the constitution frame should be analyzed in this study. The constitution frame was mostly seen in election stories from El Venezolano. This finding is logical when one analyzes the political situation in Venezuela and the relationship between the govern-ment and the media. Venezuela’s leading newspapers, for instance, are privately owned; however, dependence on government advertising discourages these newspapers from reporting on controversial and politically sensitive topics (Freedom House, 2010). In addition, freedoms of speech and the press are constitutionally guaranteed; however, defamation, especially of a public figure, can lead to prison sentences for journalists. Thus, the use of the constitution frame by El Venezolano in more than 50 percent of their stories suggests that the newspaper takes advantage that it is not under the watch of the Venezuelan government and reports freely about Venezuelans’ right to expression. The case of Venezuela demonstrates the value of incorporating a framing analysis into the investigation of transnational mediated communication; the variations found among publications indicate that transnationalism can manifest in different forms and that this process is by no means singular or homogenous. There is a plurality to these phenomena that must be recognized and made explicit for researchers seeking to further our understanding of this field.

Finally, and perhaps the most important implications for future research looking at the influence of these media outlets on their readers through reception and audience studies, our research revealed that the issue frame was only minimally used in the news stories from all four publications – meaning that substantive, actionable information for voters

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14 Journalism

was largely absent. In fact, the issue frame was the second least used overall. While these publications may be considered community-oriented, and thus reporting on topics that are of import to the target immigrant population, the coupling of electoral coverage with the underlying political issues at stake in the election was very seldom seen. Interestingly, when the data were separated by election focus (home country vs host country), the lack of focus on the issue frame was even more evident: news stories about the home countries used the issue frame significantly less than news stories about the host country. One pos-sible explanation for the dismal use of the issue frame (although confirmation of this would require further research) could be related to the type of publication being analyzed. As these publications are tabloid-format, in general, the focus is not on debating sensitive political or election issues, but informing their reader about the latest celebrity scandal in their country, for instance. More importantly, this result also indicates that if these publi-cations are one of the sources these communities turn to for information on elections tak-ing place at home, and using this information when they go to their consulate to vote, they are doing so armed with an understanding that is not based on substantive reporting or analysis of the important issues in the election, but rather with shallower, more sensation-alistic information that is focused on little else than who will win and who will lose.

Limitations and future research

A significant amount of research over the years has been dedicated to the Cuban and Cuban-American communities in South Florida; looking at the groups we chose allowed for a more original contribution concerning other less studied, but rapidly expanding, groups of immigrants. There were also issues of language when considering Haitian media, which tend to be published either in French or Creole (we had access to Spanish-speaking coders), and while they are significant in terms of population size, the Honduran, Dominican, and Mexican communities have very few media outlets that target their com-munities in particular. However, given their size and socio-economic demographics, a future study would do well to consider more closely the small number of media serving the Honduran, Mexican, and Nicaraguan communities, whether or not they are covered in the more mainstream media outlets in the region, and how this might potentially affect their status, influence, and profile among the region’s Hispanic immigrant groups. As mentioned previously, larger mainstream Spanish-language newspapers, such as ENH and Diario Las Américas were not included in this analysis, but should be included in future studies as an important point of reference, comparison, and contrast.

The fact that the Venezuelan outlet had a larger number of articles undoubtedly influ-enced the overall data for the study. However, the numbers by publication also matched up fairly closely with the overall data, so the effect was not in the end all that great. Additionally, the choice of election coverage also most likely affected the strong ten-dency toward stories that were focused internationally; future research should look at other important topics for these communities (e.g. immigration, human rights, education, health, the environment), which will provide for some interesting comparisons and insights into how certain topics may have a more transnational tendency in the way they are covered than others.

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Fernandes and Shumow 15

As mentioned earlier, the newspaper La Estrella de Nicaragua was initially included in the collection of articles, but because only seven election stories were found, we decided to exclude this publication from the analysis. Nicaraguans are the third largest immigrant group in Miami-Dade County, Florida, yet little is known about the media and political habits of this community. Interestingly, Nicaragua held their Presidential and Parliamentary national elections on 6 November 2011. However, there was a dismal amount of coverage of their elections found in the time frame chosen for analysis. For future research, it would be interesting to examine whether this immigrant newspaper covered the election, and what factors may influence the presence or absence of election coverage.

Overall, a final point must be made about the nuanced differences among these out-lets, particularly when examining those that were found in the use of frames between outlets, and it should serve as a warning to future researchers interested in the growing number of Spanish-language media outlets across the United States: all Spanish-language media are not the same. All too often the tendency when studying Spanish-language media is to blur over differences in national and cultural identity, historical political con-texts, or, in this case, journalistic and reporting norms, in an effort to reach some broader conclusions. As can be seen in the results here (e.g. the tendency of the Argentinean outlet to give less emphasis to elections at home, at least in comparison to other Spanish-language immigrant outlets), the reality for immigrant media and their audiences is rarely so simple, and instead researchers would do well to take into account factors beyond ethnicity or language.

This exploratory research of the election coverage among a group of immigrant media outlets in Miami-Dade County uncovered a subset of Spanish-language news with a clear transnational scope. The dominance of international coverage, to the point of near exclusion of host country elections in some instances, underscores and contex-tualizes one of the myriad ways in which immigrants living in an age of globalized media and communication are able to closely follow important events at home. Furthermore, by incorporating framing theory into the investigation (which has not been done before when looking at this particular form of mediated communication), we were able to uncover not only the geographic component embedded in this election coverage, but also delve deeper into its form and content. While an overall reliance on the strategic framing, which has come to dominate election coverage regardless of the media outlet or national context, is not surprising, the lack of issue framing across the outlets raises concerns about the quality of the news and information targeted at these communities. As with nearly all exploratory research, these findings lead to further questions; in this case, there are important questions to be asked about the democratic function of such outlets as these immigrant populations seek a political identity in their newly adopted country.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions for improving the quality of the paper.

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16 Journalism

FundingThis research was supported by a Summer research grant from Florida International University - School of Journalism & Mass Communication awarded to both authors.

Notes

1. There are most likely multiple reasons why the distribution numbers would be so much higher than the combined population of these immigrant groups, but the most obvious is that the majority of Miami-Dade’s 2.5 million residents speak Spanish as a first language, and thus, the market for these outlets must be seen as extending beyond the particular immigrant group at which it is aimed.

2. Each of the publications provides an exact replication, in Portable Document Format (PDF), of every issue published in paper.

3. Freelon D ReCal: Reliability calculation for the masses. Available at: http://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront/

4. Zamith R (2011) ECACI: A Web-based electronic content analysis coding interface (Version 0.2b) (Software).

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Author biographies

Juliana Fernandes (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategic Communication at the University of Miami. Her research interests include affective impact of advertising, social media/online communication, and international political communication. She has published arti-cles in the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Current Issues in Advertising, Mass Communication & Society, American Behavioral Scientist, American Journal of Media Psychology, and in several book chapters in edited collections.

Moses Shumow (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University. His research focuses on the production and consumption of immigrant media and explores issues of globalization, culture, geography, and transnational migration. His work has been published in Media, Culture, and Society; Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism; Visual Communication; Journalism and Mass Communication Educator; Taiwan Journal of Democracy; and the International Journal of Communication. He is also the editor of the volume, Mediated Communities: Civic Voices, Empowerment and Media Literacy in the Digital Era (Peter Lang, forthcoming).

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