News narratives on migration explained.

In recent years, the level of migration in Poland has increased dramatically. Thus, the Polish media has widely started covering the topic of migration. When researching Polish news media, we can see a divergence of narratives on migration. Migration narratives and media messages are vital in shaping the audience's opinions. Thus, it becomes crucial to investigate the news production context of news narratives on migration to determine what factors influence the final image of migration portrayed in the media. Analysing how the Polish media construct and portray this crisis provides insight into how news is communicated, building a narrative that can influence public opinion, shape political debates and even influence diplomatic relations. Therefore, this study aims to identify the nuances of the Ukrainian crisis, offering a comparative analysis based on different news media and contributing to a broader understanding of the underlying news production processes and social context. Thus, our research question is: How do essential production and societal factors shape news narratives about Ukrainian refugees? Expert interviews with Polish journalists (N=7) were conducted to investigate the production aspect of media narratives. In addition, I relied on and contributed to a framework developed earlier to analyse external and internal aspects that influence the production of media narratives, the Hierarchy of Influences model developed by Reesem and Shoemaker (2016, pp. 389-410). The study will show that the critical influence on how narratives about Ukrainian refugees are presented in the Polish news media is the emotions of journalists. Here, the most crucial aspect of influencing journalists in producing narratives lies at the individual level. The study shows that emotions and personal beliefs are the strongest factors in the production context. Hence, the positive portrayal of refugees in the media is driven by empathy, sympathy, and a sense of cultural and historical closeness to Ukrainians. Such a solid emotion-driven approach negatively affects professionalism and objectivity, and therefore, a routine level in which editorial structures ensure unbiased and reliable narratives becomes crucial. However, as noted, the routine level doesn’t directly influence the production aspect as the topic of migration itself is not a primary interest for Polish news outlets. However, political influence is significant regarding journalists' views and media affiliation, but it is not the primary influence.