# Partisan US News Media Representations of Syrian Refugees

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.09024 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09024/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jun 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [ChatGPT and Bard Responses to Polarizing Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12402/) (2023)
- [How is Fatherhood Framed Online in Singapore?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04053/) (2023)
- [Belief Is All You Need: Modeling Narrative Archetypes in Conspiratorial Discourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10105/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We investigate how representations of Syrian refugees (2011-2021) differ across US partisan news outlets. We analyze 47,388 articles from the online US media about Syrian refugees to detail differences in reporting between left- and right-leaning media. We use various NLP techniques to understand these differences. Our polarization and question answering results indicated that left-leaning media tended to represent refugees as child victims, welcome in the US, and right-leaning media cast refugees as Islamic terrorists. We noted similar results with our sentiment and offensive speech scores over time, which detail possibly unfavorable representations of refugees in right-leaning media. A strength of our work is how the different techniques we have applied validate each other. Based on our results, we provide several recommendations. Stakeholders may utilize our findings to intervene around refugee representations, and design communications campaigns that improve the way society sees refugees and possibly aid refugee outcomes.