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The drowning-refugee effect: media salience and xenophobic attitudes

Author

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  • Poli, Silvia de
  • Jakobsson, Niklas
  • Schüller, Simone

Abstract

We study whether salient media coverage of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean affects individual xenophobic attitudes. We combine a randomized survey experiment - a variant of the classic trolley dilemma' - that implicitly elicits individual attitudes towards foreigners, with variation in interview timing, and find that such issue salience significantly decreases xenophobic attitudes by 2.2 percentage points. Our results thus support the idea that exposure to news describing immigrants as victims (instead of a threat) can significantly affect public opinion and mitigate bias against immigrants.

Suggested Citation

  • Poli, Silvia de & Jakobsson, Niklas & Schüller, Simone, 2017. "The drowning-refugee effect: media salience and xenophobic attitudes," Munich Reprints in Economics 49872, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:49872
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    Cited by:

    1. Heizler (Cohen), Odelia & Israeli, Osnat, 2024. "Does a Tragic Event Affect Different Aspects of Attitudes toward Immigration?," IZA Discussion Papers 16802, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Claudio Deiana & Gianluca Mazzarella & Elena Claudia Meroni & Luca Tiozzo Pezzoli, 2023. "The unexpected influencer: Pope Francis and European perceptions of the recent refugee crisis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(1), pages 75-95.
    3. Anna Brosius & Erika J van Elsas & Claes H de Vreese, 2019. "How media shape political trust: News coverage of immigration and its effects on trust in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 447-467, September.
    4. Heizler, Odelia & Israeli, Osnat, 2021. "The identifiable victim effect and public opinion toward immigration; a natural experiment study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    5. Alessandro Sola, 2018. "The 2015 Refugee Crisis in Germany: Concerns about Immigration and Populism," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 966, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

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