In order to analyze the representation of migrants in the Italian media, we focused on three
months of the main Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, selecting all the articles with the keyword
«migrants». The content analysis shows that the narrative of the medium describes foreigners 1. as an
abstract and depersonalized group, where it is not possible to discover any individuality; 2. as «flows»,
«quotas» or «abstract problems» described in an «alarmist» way. This alarm is not generated by migrants’
characteristics (ethnicity, religion, values, behavior, features that are infrequent in the articles) but
by the numbers related to the phenomenon, always «exaggerated», «record», «emergent». This journalistic
representation describes migrants in an abstract and depersonalized way as «emergencies», «problems
» and «numbers» and the resultant narrative seems to produce indifference to the phenomenon.
