Coverage of Mexico in United States media: Phases of academic scholarship

International communication and academic production

Among the most dynamic relations in the current world, the United States and Mexico are at the top. These two nations share one of the busiest borders; in 2012 Mexico bought $185 billion in goods from the United States, which represents twice what China buys in American products (CIA, 2014). On the other hand, the United States bought $289 billion in products from Mexico, close to 75% of all Mexican exports. Since the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA, the economic relationship between the two countries has increased by 300% (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005). Additionally, the Pew Research Center has estimated at 34 million the number of people of Mexican descent living in the United States (Lopez et al., 2013). At the same time, Mexico is home to the largest American population living outside the United States (CIA, 2014).

With the latter in mind, little is known about the production of academic studies related to Mexico’s coverage by the media in the United States. It has been suggested that there has been a significant increase in the coverage of NAFTA within the United States media (Schmitt, 1995). However, there are no references that allow academics to have a clear view of the amount of research produced so far not only about NAFTA, but about Mexico in general, nor the focus of study, topics, methods, objectives, and impact of the academic work about the construction of Mexico’s image through United States media.

In this study, international communication is at the core of the analysis, however, there is no previous research to draw a conclusion related to the traits of academic production about the coverage of Mexico in the United States media, or traits of any other nation’s coverage of a neighbor. Thus, the communicative practices are not the main object of this study, but rather the academic production itself to understand how media research makes its way into academic production and what has been the focal point of scholars in the United States regarding this matter. The goal is to establish what the theoretical background and research topics have been. As other researchers have noted, by doing so, scholars can identify gaps related to the topic, advance research with a comprehensive framework, improve collaboration among researchers, and understand what types of communication theories are having an impact on international communication studies (e.g., Allen, 2009; Kamhawi and Weaver, 2003). The findings related to patterns may also be applied to research regarding other nations, such as the Israeli coverage of neighbor territories/nations (Stein, 2012), or the coverage of China in western media (Guo, 2012). An increasing number of these kinds of studies suggest these cases might follow a similar trend of the US coverage on Mexico.

Considering the importance of the United States–Mexico relationship, the media practices in the US towards foreign nationals (Aguirre et al., 2011), and taking academic work as a reflection and an effort to understand complex realities, it is relevant to ask the following research questions:

(RQ1) What is the yearly average academic production about Mexico in the United States media?

Sample

To identify information related to the study of coverage of Mexico in United States media we looked into academic databases that included records of books, journals, theses, and dissertations. These included Communication and Mass Media Complete, ProQuest, Summon, PAIS, and Google Scholar. Dates in the search ranged from 1970 to 2014. In total, 67 journal articles, books, dissertations, and theses published between 1984 and 2014 were found through different combinations of the keywords ‘Mexico, United States, news, coverage, image, and media.’ Book chapters were also researched but none of the publications addressed specifically the coverage of Mexico within the United States.

We also conducted in the same databases a search of work written in Spanish using different combinations of the words ‘Mexico, Estados Unidos, cobertura, imagen, noticias’ and only one article from 1993 emerged. Thus, the sample is focused on publications written in English.

To be considered for this analysis, studies had to meet specific characteristics. First, their content had to deal with coverage of Mexico in information media based in the United States. Secondly, they had to be published by an established journal, a university or private publisher, or as part of the academic requirements to obtain a graduate degree in a higher education institution, such as a dissertation.

Of the original 67 studies found, a final sample of 35 publications were included in the data set, the rest did not specifically address the coverage of Mexico in United States media and were focused, in general, on media structures in Mexico and the United States, and coverage of Mexican social and political issues by Mexican media. Not included were articles, books, dissertations, or book chapters about Mexican media (e.g., Fromson, 1996).

Coding procedures

A content analysis of each one of the studies was conducted to extract the following elements:

Production of academic studies about coverage of Mexico in the US media

All of the research created in the last 30 years about Mexico in the US media used specific forms of media as their main source for analysis. Most of them took newspapers as objects of study, followed by television and films. Not a single study about radio coverage was conducted. The reason may be that in the United States traditional television news viewership continues to trump Internet news viewing (Gallup, 2013; Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2012). Further, scholars have been guided by studies that illustrate the attention that political and business elites place on print news (e.g., Entman, 2004).

Importantly, there was a clear lack of attention allocated to forms of media that have emerged since the mid-1990s. This significant research gap means that researchers and universities have not devoted resources to the analysis of blogs, digital news outlets, podcasts, digital social media, online streamings, and other sorts of media that have gained relevance especially in the last decade. This is also an indicator of how power is distributed in media structures and the impact it has on academic scholarship (Castells, 2013). In the cases of publications with more than one platform as their main source for analysis they include a combination of traditional media—mainly printed newspapers and television. The reason for this might be grounded in the fleeting nature of digital media and the complications posed to researchers when trying to capture a valid probability sample for academic purposes (Mitchelstein and Boczkowski, 2009). However, given methods to overcome this (e.g., Riffe et al., 2014), news delivered on digital and mobile platforms is important to analyze and understand. Otherwise researchers are omitting the only form of information that many viewers, especially younger audiences, are consuming. This issue reflects that the international communication scholarly corpus continues to be centered on the study of traditional media, a conclusion that Kamhawi and Weaver (2003) also found in their meta-analyses of mass communication research.

However, despite the absence of research about digital media, there has been an exponential growth of academic production on the coverage of Mexico in the US. Almost two-thirds of all the research has been generated in the last decade, from 2004 to 2014. This is a remarkable increase if we consider that from 1984 to 1993 only 9% of the total research output was published. In addition, 52% of all studies have been created from 2009 to 2014, which indicates a continued proliferation of this kind of academic research.

Another relevant aspect is the number of researchers in relation to the amount of publications about this subject. Only a few scholars have produced more than one study about coverage of Mexico on US media, most of them have published only one article. This could be considered, at the same time, a positive and negative sign. First, it means that the interest on the topic has been distributed among a wide range of scholars placed in many universities across the United States. But this might also be an indication of a lessened opportunity to build a body of knowledge and specialized scholars within international communication.

It also seems interesting that only three of the studies were produced by researchers affiliated with Mexican higher education institutions, two of them supported by public funding—El Colegio de México and Universidad de Guadalajara—and the other one of private nature—Universidad Iberoamericana. All the other publications were developed in US institutions, where almost all of the researchers that have conducted this type of investigations are affiliated with public universities. Roughly 18% of the studies were generated at private academic institutions. It is worth noticing that coverage of Mexico in the US seems to be a relevant topic for academics based in United States higher education institutions, therefore almost all of the research about this is disseminated in the English language. The Communication and Mass Media Complete database indexes Spanish-language journals as well, but nonetheless only one journal article in Spanish—produced in a Mexican institution in 1993—was found to deal with the coverage of Mexico in the US. This article talks about the depiction of Mexican immigrants and analyzed US newspapers from 1980 to 1988. In terms of books, only Aguayo’s (1998) research was originally written in Spanish under the title El panteón de los mitos: Estados Unidos y el nacionalismo mexicano, and was translated into English. We included the English version in this analysis.

Phases of academic scholarship

Studies organized in chronological order suggest four different phases of academic focus. The first one includes publications from 1984 to 1993 and we named it the Cultural Understanding Phase. This period of time comprises studies based on cultural exchanges and an effort to understand Mexico through US media, and how Mexicans perceive national issues through US media. The second phase—the NAFTA Phase—ranges from 1995 to 1996 and two publications were produced during those years; both of them were interested in the media implications of the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1994. The third phase, the International and Cultural Integration Phase, includes 51% of the total academic production and is also the longest one in terms of years, it starts in 1997 and ends in 2010. Over those years there is an academic inclination to explore media representations of foreign nations in the US, and an effort to explore cultural and geographic perceptions transmitted through US media. Also, here can be found a clear attempt to conduct binational studies that analyze content from the US and Mexican media. The last stage (2010–2014) is the Threat Phase, which can be described as the analysis of a media narrative where Mexicans are depicted as a menace for the United States (Aguirre et al., 2011; Chavez, 2013). Scholarship of this phase represents 33% of the total academic production about coverage of Mexico in the US. With the exception of two articles that deal with environmental issues and the relationship of Mexico’s Televisa and the US’s Univision, all the publications of this stage are interested in the examination of media representations of Mexico as a convoluted place. Thus, the interest seems to be placed on how media outlets are conveying the idea that Mexicans and Mexican–Americans represent a threat to the United States. It would be interesting to examine coverage of other nations to determine whether there were similar shifts in international communication research.

Social and academic context

Despite the social issues going on in Mexico, where from 2006 to 2012 about 121,000 people have been killed due to the ongoing war on drugs (Proceso, 2013), security/border/drug-related news coverage was the main object of analysis in only 12% of the publications. Researchers in this area have been more interested in reflecting how US media portray Mexico and Mexicans from a social, economic, and cultural perspective.

Geographic proximity and cultural proximity of the Hispanic population

The data in this study show a tendency of scholars affiliated with universities in border states producing more research about coverage of Mexico in the US media. Of the total publications, a third were created in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, Texas being the state with higher academic research on the topic. However, it is relevant to highlight that with 12.1%, North Carolina has the same amount of publications as California. The latter is an indicator that geographic proximity is not the only element that influences academic interest in the subject, but also that Hispanic population size plays a role. North Carolina has doubled its Hispanic population size, from 4.71% in 2000 to 8.39% in 2010, which accounts for more than 800,000 thousand people of Hispanic origin (Chesser, 2012). Almost 500,000 North Carolinians self-identifying as Latino or Hispanic were of Mexican heritage, this totals 5.1% of the North Carolina population (United States Census, 2010).

In the case of scholars located at Mexican higher education institutions and producing research about this matter, none of them was placed in a border state. Two of their institutions are based in Mexico City and the other one in Guadalajara, which are the two of the three main academic hubs—along with Monterrey—in Mexico. In short, some of the classic theoretical concepts that have been found to correlate with volume of international news, such as geographic and cultural proximity, appear to drive interest by researchers, too (e.g., Gonzenbach et al., 1992; Östgaard, 1965; Rosengren, 1974; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1984; Túñez and Guevara, 2009). However, in a post-hoc similar search of journalism and media research in other countries, we could find no similar volume of work, at least in English-language or Spanish-language journals. Some of the reasons for this interest in Mexico and its image in the United States are related to a shared history between the two countries and the increasing economic relations through NAFTA (Aguayo, 1998). These two countries have a unique relationship that is represented with nearly one million authorized people crossing from one country to the other every day (Emmerich, 2003).

Theoretical focus

Framing and agenda-setting research dominate the academic production related to this matter. These studies are focused on analyzing how media companies convey concepts of Mexico, Mexicans, and Mexicanness in the US. Discourse analysis, threat narrative, news frames, and priming are among the main academic interests. In this case, the study of media agenda (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) displays an academic curiosity about topics related to the integration, perception, and/or acceptance of Mexico and Mexicans within the US territory. Besides, news publication patterns are at the top of the academics’ interests. The dominance of agenda-setting studies suggests that there is an opportunity for scholars to pursue other theoretical frameworks. Cultural and/or critical studies related to media coverage of another nation could bring a relevant insight into the conversation that might reflect how individuals perceive the news narrative at a more personalized level, similar issues focused on ethnic frames have been largely studied (Dixon and Azocar, 2006; Dixon and Linz, 2000; Domke, 2001; Entman, 1992, 1994; Perry and McNelly, 1988). These theoretical directions—along with other methods—are possible paths for scholars who want to develop international communication theory.

Research impact

Journal impact factor is a widely discussed measurement. The main assumption is that a higher impact factor implies more citations and, therefore, a better distribution and quality of the research. However, there is no consensus on what could be considered a ‘good’ impact factor, especially when dealing with journals that belong to several disciplines. In communication, it has been confirmed that a journal with a higher impact factor does not always have more citations and the number of citations does not necessarily reflect theoretical or methodological development (Beatty et al., 2012). Mutz and Hans-Dieter (2012) noted that five variables that influence impact factors include the document type, age of the document, topic of the study, the citation period, and social status such as that the prominence of a scholar’s institution. Also, impact factors are changing: specialty journals are increasing their citation rankings while National Communication Association (NCA) journals are getting fewer citations. Additionally, the Institute for Scientific Information citations have been found to be biased in communication research (Levine, 2009). In this respect, we analyzed the citations included in articles published from 2004 to 2014 to determine what works were cited by other authors referring to the same topic. We confirmed that journals with higher impact factors are not yielding a bigger number of citations in this group. Take for example the case of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. With an impact factor of 0.354 it produced more citations—six—from other sources than the work published, for instance, by The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, which has an impact factor of 1.396 and produced one citation.

The main limitation of this study is that it is focused on the coverage of Mexico in the United States media; it does not include the treatment in regard to other nations. Thus, with the current information it is not possible to compare academic production patterns in relation to international communication processes. In future research it will be important to explore the research that has been done about coverage of Mexico in countries other than the United States. A possible topic to study is whether the academic agenda (growth in the topic of US news coverage of Mexico) follows the increase in media coverage. In other words, do media set the agenda for academic inquiry?

In summary, this study contributes to knowledge of international research trends and suggests that the lack of attention to digital media and limited theoretical range are the two main gaps to address in future communication research. Given the debate at US universities about impact factors, the findings regarding impact factors and citations may also be useful to academic administrators or scholars undergoing tenure and promotion. There has been little research published about communication impact factors, and more is needed.

Finally, although media researchers have devoted substantial study to factors influencing journalists’ reporting on news of other nations, the intriguing findings that concepts such as geographic or cultural proximity may also apply to scholarship opens up future research possibilities, too.