TY - CEPII
A1 - Sarah Schneider-Strawczynski A1 - Jérôme Valette
TI - Media Coverage of Immigration and the Polarization of Attitudes
IS - 2024-01
T3 - Working Papers
KW - Immigration KW - Media KW - Polarization KW - Salience
N2 -
This paper investigates the effect of media coverage on immigration attitudes. It combines data on immigration coverage in French television with individual panel data from 2013 to 2017 that records respondents’ preferred television channel and attitudes toward immigration. The analysis focuses on within-individual variations over time, addressing ideological self-selection into channels. We find that increased coverage of immigration polarizes attitudes, with initially moderate individuals becoming more likely to report extremely positive and negative attitudes. This polarization is mainly driven by an increase in the salience of immigration, which reactivates preexisting prejudices, rather than persuasion effects from biased news consumption.