  We investigate how representations of Syrian refugees (2011-2021) differ
across US partisan news outlets. We analyze 47,388 articles from the online US
media about Syrian refugees to detail differences in reporting between left-
and right-leaning media. We use various NLP techniques to understand these
differences. Our polarization and question answering results indicated that
left-leaning media tended to represent refugees as child victims, welcome in
the US, and right-leaning media cast refugees as Islamic terrorists. We noted
similar results with our sentiment and offensive speech scores over time, which
detail possibly unfavorable representations of refugees in right-leaning media.
A strength of our work is how the different techniques we have applied validate
each other. Based on our results, we provide several recommendations.
Stakeholders may utilize our findings to intervene around refugee
representations, and design communications campaigns that improve the way
society sees refugees and possibly aid refugee outcomes.
