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 pre-existing prejudices, rather than persuasion effects from biased news consumption.
That is by Sarah Schneider-Strawczynski and Jérôme Valette, and here is the AEA-gated link, here are less gated copies. You can even see this effect in the MR comments section and also on Twitter. People are not persuaded by good arguments, rather they just think about the issue more, which in many cases leads them into further error and negative contagion.
The post Covering immigration is a mixed bag appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
