Diverse Effects of Mass Media Concerns about Immigration: New Evidence from Germany, 2001 - 2016

Abstract

Media discourse is often seen as an important condition of people's attitudes and perceptions. Despite a rich literature, however, it is not well understood how media exposure influences attitudes towards immigrants. In contrast to previous studies, we argue that people rely on 'availability heuristics' shaped by mass media. From that point of view, it is the specific content of media discourse on immigration that affects people's concerns. We use 'Structural Topic Models' to classify media content of more than 24.000 articles of leading German newspapers from 2001 to 2016. Utilizing 'linear fixed effect models' allows us to relate a person's concern towards immigration as reported in the German Socioeconomic Panel to prevalent topics discussed in print media while controlling for several confounding factors (e.g., party preferences, interest in politics, etc.). We find a robust relationship between topic salience and attitudes towards integration. Our results also reveal that specific topics with negative contents (e.g., domestic violence) to increase concerns, while others (e.g., scientific studies, soccer) decrease concerns substantially, underlining the importance of available information provided by media. In addition, people with higher education are generally less affected by media salience of topics.