Fox News Talked More About Migrant 'Invasion' Just Before Election Than In Past 3 Years Total

[Demovictory9]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fox-news-migrant-invasion_us_5c0abb34e4b035a7bf5af1b5

Ahead of his party’s shellacking in the 2018 midterm elections, Republican President Donald Trump spent weeks warning his supporters that a caravan of Central American migrants headed for the U.S border constituted an “invasion.”

Trump’s favorite television channel was his most important ally in that effort. Prime-time Fox News programs used the words “invasion” or “invaders” to describe migrants and asylum-seekers more times in the 30 days leading up to the Nov. 6 election than they did during all of 2015, 2016 and 2017 combined.

I used transcripts to analyze the use of the terms “invasion” or “invaders” to refer to immigrants or asylum seekers on Fox News prime-time programming from Jan. 1, 2015, to Nov. 30, 2018. The analysis shows that, although the network was pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric before Trump announced his candidacy, a noticeable uptick occurred in the months around the 2018 midterm election. Prime-time Fox News hosts and guests used the words to refer to migrants 33 times in the 30 days ahead of the election, up from 25 times in all of 2015, 2016 and 2017. Fox has kept up the attacks in the weeks after the Republicans lost the U.S. House: Prime-time hosts and guests used the terms 48 times between Election Day and the end of November. Most of the mentions came from Fox hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson.

[EricMaundry]

1. How'd that work out for them?

Mmm, not so good.