Citation

Poli SD, Jakobsson N, Schüller S. Appl. Econ. Lett. 2017; 24(16): 1167-1172.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13504851.2016.1262513

PMID

unavailable

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.

Language: en

Keywords

attitudes towards immigration; D72; D83; J61; Media salience; refugees; trolley problem; xenophobia