Framing child refugee deaths across water borders: media narratives of Alan Kurdi and Valeria Martínez-Ramírez in Turkey and Mexico

Abstract This article examines media narratives surrounding the deaths of two child refugees—Alan Kurdi in the Aegean Sea (2015) and Valeria Martínez-Ramírez (2019) in the Rio Grande—to explore how journalistic coverage constructs affect, politics, crisis, and blame in the context of forced displacement. Moving beyond U.S. and European media–centric analyses, the study adopts a comparative approach that centers national and local news media in Turkey and Mexico, the last sites of departure before these deaths occurred. Drawing on a discourse analysis of 328 Turkish (N = 213) and Spanish-language (N = 115) news articles spanning diverse political orientations, the article investigates how these tragedies were framed and understood. The findings reveal two dominant thematic patterns: discourses of responsibility and blame, and humanitarian and religious narratives that function as unifying agents across racial, ethnic, and national divides. By decentering Global North media perspectives, this study contributes to comparative migration scholarship and underscores the importance of localized media contexts in shaping understandings of refugee deaths and humanitarian crises.