The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigration

Sekou Keita, Thomas Renault and Jérôme Valette

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: Immigration and crime are two first-order issues that are often considered jointly in people's minds. This paper analyzes how media reporting policies on crime impact natives' attitudes towards immigration. We depart from most studies by investigating the content of crime-related articles instead of their coverage. Specifically, we use a radical change in local media reporting on crime in Germany as a naturel experiment. This unique framework allows us to estimate whether systematically disclosing the places of origin of criminals affects natives' attitudes towards immigration. We combine individual survey data collected between January 2014 and December 2018 from the Germain socio-Economic Panel with data from more than 545,000 crime-related articles in German newspapers and data on their diffusion across the country. Our results indicate that systematically mentioning the origins of criminals, especially when offenders are natives, significantly reduces natives' concerns about immigration

Keywords: Immigration; Crime; Media Bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 K42 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2021/21004.pdf (application/pdf)
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03167833

Related works:
Journal Article: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigration (2024)
Working Paper: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigration (2024)
Journal Article: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigration (2023)
Working Paper: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigration (2022)
Working Paper: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigration (2022)
Working Paper: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigration (2022)
Working Paper: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigration (2021)
Working Paper: The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigration (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:21004

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