Communicating Racism and Xenophobia in the Era of Donald Trump: A Computational Framing Analysis of the US-Mexico Cross-Border Wall Discourses

Abstract Trump’s disruptive presidency has created predictable schisms in international politics, relations, trade relations, cultures, and social structures worldwide. His campaign promises and subsequent executive orders have constructed a 200-mile wall across the US and Mexican borders. The Wall project has cost about $20 billion and has incurred criticisms about its anti-immigrant, racism, and xenophobia implications domestically and internationally. In this cross-national computational framing study, we examined the corpus of English-language media discourses of 967 articles to describe, compare, and interpret how international media organizations and journalists have framed this monumental architecture during Trump’s Presidency (2017–2020). Our text mining analyses have identified six news frames and confirmed home country’s existing racism and xenophobia account for variations in the framing practices of the Wall project among media organizations and journalists around the world. Discussions and implications were provided.