There was significant media coverage of migrant flows in the summer of 2015 and public debate is ongoing. A central issue covered by the media regarded the risks associated with the entrance of refugees in the European Union, thus we decided to analyze the way in which online media covered the violence that involved refugees in the time frame of 1 June 2015–31 October 2016. The analysis highlighted that journalists were mostly interested in publishing cases of illegal border crossings and less interested in cases of severe interpersonal violence (such as murder, rape, and suicide). This time, journalists decided to publicize crimes which affected national security (therefore, they threatened the entire territory and population of a country) and focused less on crimes which involved hurting some categories of vulnerable people (women, children, or elderly people). The main changes that we identified were how refugees were framed regarding the place of the media and journalists as ‘secondary definers’ of crimes, and the positioning of the refugee in the role of victim. © The Author(s) 2018.

Refugees media framing media coverage ‘primary definers’ Crimes

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