Some Media Matter More Than Others: Investigating Media Effects on Attitudes toward and Perceptions of Immigration in Sweden

Abstract

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.

Does News Frame Affect Free Movement Attitudes? A Comparative Analysis

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Neighboring Countries, Worlds Apart? : Explaining the Swedish-Danish Difference inImmigration-Integration Policy

“…Alternative media have become increasingly important as a source of news, especially so for populist voters who show significantly lower levels of trust in mainstream media and largely seek their news via non-traditional channels (Hagelund 2020). There is also evidence to suggest that alternative media is more powerful than traditional media in shaping immigration attitudes of the reader/viewer in both leftist and rightist fora (Theorin and Strömbäck 2020). This is of course partly a result of such media's tendency to encapsulate the users into ever narrower echo-chambers without dissenting views.…”

Attitudes towards no-European Immigrants in EU: The Role of Legacy Media and New Media

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