To understand public opinion about immigration in Europe, one has to understand the media's role in it. We present a literature review on research on media discourse on immigration and their effects. Despite differences in the way immigration and migrant groups are represented in European media, we can observe common patterns. Migrants are generally under-represented and shown as delinquents or criminals. Although, media framing differs based on specific migrant groups the discourse is focusing on, immigration coverage is often negative and conflict-centred. Frequent exposure to such media messages leads to negative attitudes towards migration, may activate stereotypical cognitions of migrant groups, and even influence vote choice. In addition to discussing these issues in depth, the present review also focuses on comparative findings.

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Over the last decade, issues related to immigration have become increasingly salient across Western democracies. This increasing salience has made it more important to understand people’s attitudes toward immigration, including the effects of media use on those attitudes. Differentiating between attitudes toward different types of immigration, attitudes toward immigration from different parts of the world, and perceptions of immigration’s impact, this article investigates the effects of media use on attitudes toward and perceptions of immigration in Sweden. Based on a three-year, three-wave panel study, it investigates the effects of media use on the individual level. Among other things, results show that there are limited effects of using traditional news media but more substantial effects on people’s immigration attitudes of using anti-immigration, right-wing alternative media and pro-immigration, left-wing alternative media. These findings imply that it is highly relevant to account for media use, especially alternative media use, when studying public attitudes toward immigration. Further, we find that variations in people’s immigration attitudes, to a high degree, depend on the type of immigration and on where migrants are coming from. This finding underlines the importance of measuring both of these aspects when the aim is understanding general attitudes toward immigration and/or key predictors behind immigration attitudes.

The policy of free movement—one of the core principles of the European Union—has become increasingly politicized. This makes it more important to understand how attitudes toward free movement are shaped, and the role of the media. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how news frames affect attitudes toward free movement, and whether education moderates framing effects. The findings from a survey experiment conducted in seven European countries show that the effects are few and inconsistent across countries. This suggest that these attitudes are not easily shifted by exposure to a single news frame.

The immigration issue seems to have consolidated a top position on the European political agenda, and the body of literature devoted to explaining attitudes toward immigration continues to expand. Alongside established models focusing on threat perceptions as the central mechanism behind anti-immigration attitudes, increased attention has been paid to the role of media. The aim of the present study is to test the effects of media use on attitudes toward immigration from regions that are perceived to be remote versus those close to the host society. Moreover, the study goes beyond previous research by investigating reciprocal relationships between the use of specific media types and attitudes toward immigration. While the empirical findings suggest that the effects of using traditional news media is weak, right-wing alternative media appears more powerful in influencing immigration attitudes. Specifically, the results indicate that the use of right-wing alternative media reinforces negative attitudes toward perceived remote immigration. At the same time, the use of right-wing alternative media