Accent on Opinion: Latino Immigration Discourse on North Carolina Opinion Pages (2008)

Undergraduate: Leah Szarek

Faculty Advisor: Jane Brown
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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The dramatic growth of the Latino immigrant population in North Carolina has forced communities to confront the accompanying economic, cultural, and political challenges. Community conflict theory suggests that the press in small communities seeks to minimize conflict over divisive community issues like immigration by limiting discussion of the issue to us-versus-them rhetoric, while the press in large communities encourages conflicting views. How do the opinion pages of newspapers in metropolitan, suburban, and rural communities in North Carolina approach the local Latino immigration debate?

All opinion content from the July, August, and September 2006 editions of The Salisbury Post, The Mint Hill Times, and The Asheville Citizen-Times were coded to determine the frequency, prominence, and authorship of Latino immigration discourse. The opinion items that addressed the local impact of Latino immigration were then analyzed for thematic conceptualization of immigration, word choice, metaphor, and sentence structure.

The Salisbury Post and The Mint Hill Times, which serve the rural town of Landis and suburban Mint Hill respectively, both demonstrated the expected propensity for us-versus-them rhetoric that effectively minimized conflict by uniting non-Latino residents against the Latino out-group. The Asheville Citizen-Times included a broader array of opinions. However, Latino voices were conspicuously absent and most content relied heavily on us-versus-them rhetoric.