Toward an Integrated Theoretical Model of Migration News Framing: Salience, Sourcing and Discourse in the Nigerian Press

Fred Odianosen Itua1; Kenneth Asor Tsebee1

doi:10.56201/rjmcit.vol.12.no6.2026.pg1.7

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Toward an Integrated Theoretical Model of Migration News Framing: Salience, Sourcing and Discourse in the Nigerian Press

Fred Odianosen Itua1 and Kenneth Asor Tsebee1

Abstract

Irregular migration has become one of the defining social phenomena of contemporary Nigeria, yet the theoretical apparatus available for understanding how the nation's press constructs meaning around it remains fragmented across several distinct, rarely integrated, traditions of communication scholarship. This paper is a theoretical contribution that reviews four bodies of theory commonly applied, in isolation, to migration journalism, media framing theory, agenda setting theory, the social responsibility theory of the press, and critical discourse analysis, and argues that each, taken alone, captures only part of the process by which migration news comes to hold the meaning it does for a national audience. Framing theory explains what a story emphasises; agenda setting theory explains how prominently it is placed; social responsibility theory supplies the normative standard against which coverage should be judged; and critical discourse analysis exposes the linguistic and ideological mechanisms through which migrants are constructed as either deserving subjects or threatening others. Drawing these strands together, the paper proposes an integrated theoretical model, termed the Salience Sourcing Discourse model, which conceptualises migration news construction as the joint product of three interacting mechanisms: salience allocation, source stratification, and discursive legitimation. Six theoretical propositions are advanced to specify the relationships among these mechanisms and their consequences for public understanding and policy discourse. The paper concludes by discussing the model's implications for future empirical research, journalism education, and media policy in Nigeria and comparable postcolonial press systems.

References

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Toward an Integrated Theoretical Model of Migration News Framing: Salience, Sourcing and Discourse in the Nigerian Press

Abstract

References

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