En av de hetaste politiska frågorna i dagens Europa rör invandring. Många förefaller oroliga för hur invandringen kommer att påverka samhällsutvecklingen. Eftersom det är en politiskt het fråga rapporterar media en hel del om invandringens olika sidor. Kan det i sig påverka människors oro? Det verkar så, enligt den nya studien ”Media Coverage and Immigration Worries: Econometric Evidence” (preliminär gratisversion här). Forskarna använder svaren på en enkätfråga för att utröna hur oroliga tyskarna är:

We employ the answers to the question “How concerned are you about the following issues? … Immigration to Germany” as our dependent variable, which we recode such that “not concerned at all” takes the value -1, “somewhat concerned” the value 0, and “very concerned” the value 1. Hence, a positive value for our dependent variable of interest implies that the individual respondent is considerably worried about immigration.

Resultat:

Using detailed data on media coverage in Germany, we show that the amount of media reports regarding migration issues is positively associated with concerns about immigration among the German population. This association is strongest when immigrants are the protagonists of media reports. The established relationship is robust to the inclusion of time-variant individual control variables and individual fixed-effects. We address endogeneity concerns by employing media spillovers from the neighboring country of Switzerland, which occur due to referendum decisions on immigration, as an instrumental variable. The IV estimates suggest that media coverage has a causal impact on immigration worries. The effect of media coverage persists even when worries concerning unemployment, crime or the level of xenophobia are accounted for.

Innebär detta att media bör skriva mindre om invandring?

Se även de tidigare inläggen ”Vad media skriver om invandrare påverkar väljare” och ”Media som orsak till hatbrott mot muslimer”.