Objectivisation and genderisation in news frames about immigration: the Carola Rackete case

In June 2019, the captain of the sea-rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3, Carola Rackete, decided to dock on Lampedusa in spite of the ban promoted by former Minister of Interior, Matteo Salvini. The article underlines the role of newsmaking in politicizing immigration and fuelling three intertwined trends of the post-public sphere: manipulation of the debate, objectification of migrants and genderisation of the conflict. To highlight those features, we have analysed 250 articles from eight Italian online media outlets on the Rackete case. Through a frame analysis, we have identified how the process of ideology construction has started from the destiny of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and ended in a geopolitical game that sees Italy and the European Union at the antipodes. The article looks at what happens when the objectification of migrants leads to their removal from the public sphere: new actors emerge as endowed with a political subjectivity, attracting all the attention in a framework of personalization and polarization of the political debate.