Real World is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional ... · PDF fileAdditional Source of...
Transcript of Real World is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional ... · PDF fileAdditional Source of...
Real World is Not Enough The Media as an
Additional Source of Negative Attitudes Toward
Immigration Comparing Denmark and the
Netherlands
Marijn van Klingeren1 Hajo G Boomgaarden2 Rens Vliegenthart1 and
Claes H de Vreese1
1Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) University of Amsterdam The Netherlands and2Department of Methods University of Vienna Austria
Corresponding author Email mvanklingerenuvanl
Submitted August 2013 revised October 2014 accepted October 2014
Abstract
Most people are unable to accurately estimate the number of immigrants in their country
Nonetheless it has been argued that the size of the immigrant population would affect peoplersquos immi-
gration attitudes Part of the effect of immigration on attitudes occurs not so much because of real
immigration figures but rather because of media reporting about immigration In this study negative
attitudes towards immigration are explained by investigating the impact of the salience and the tone
of immigration topics in the news media vis-a-vis the impact of immigration statistics The cases of
Denmark and the Netherlands are analysed for a period from 2003 to 2010 using a multilevel design
Overall real-world immigration numbers have little impact The tone of news coverage has an effect
in the Netherlands a positive tone reduces negativity towards immigration while a negative tone
does not increase negativity We cautiously conclude that the longevity of the issuersquos salience has a
moderating effect
Introduction
In the 1990s many European countries experienced a
large increase in immigration (Boswell 2005) Immi-
grants from Western and non-Western countries entered
Europe in greater numbers than before Arguably as
much recent scholarship has noted such increased immi-
gration created tension between the native population
and the immigrant population and triggered ethnic
prejudice xenophobia hostile attitudes and discrimin-
ation towards immigrants or their religious expressions
(Ceobanu and Escandell 2010 Schluter and Davidov
2013 Helbling 2014) Previous studies have shown that
real-world developments (RWDs) such as the size of the
immigrant population or gross domestic product (GDP)
have a direct impact on negative attitudes towards
immigrants (Quillian 1995 Scheepers et al 2002
Semyonov et al 2006)
Research also shows that the news media can play an
important role in explaining anti-immigration attitudes
(Esser and Brosius 1996 Vergeer et al 2000)
VC The Author 2014 Published by Oxford University Press All rights reserved
For permissions please e-mail journalspermissionsoupcom
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 268ndash283
doi 101093esrjcu089
Advance Access Publication Date 10 December 2014
Original Article
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However the amount of media coverage of immigration
does not accurately represent actual immigrant inflows
(Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) Furthermore
Sides and Citrin (2007) found a systematic discrepancy
between peoplersquos estimates and the real size of the immi-
grant population they argue that the discrepancy is due
to the visibility of minority groups in the media which
differs from reality Changes in the media environment
(see also Jerit et al 2006)mdasheither alterations in the
attention given to the issue or changes in the general va-
lence of news reportsmdashmay have a substantial impact
on immigration attitudes above and beyond that of
RWDs Because it is unclear how the media play a role
alongside RWDs we propose the following research
question To what extent do the size of the immigrant
population the media visibility and the tone of news re-
ports about immigration affect immigration attitudes
Scholars have established effects of the media on
immigration attitudes and related behaviors in various
European countries (Esser and Brosius 1996 Vergeer
et al 2000 Walgrave and De Swert 2004
Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart 2007 2009 Schemer
2012 Schluter and Davidov 2013) However most of
these studies are based on single case or cross-sectional
data And only occasionally do they include systematic-
ally coded data of the content of the news (for example
see Schemer 2012) This study expands on previous
studies by investigating the presence of the immigration
issue in the media as well as the tone of news reports re-
garding this issue using manually coded content data
Here the inclusion of tone is an important addition
Often the effects caused by the presence of media cover-
age (ie salience or exposure) are attributable to the
negative nature of news messages (Persson and Musher-
Eizenman 2005 Shrum 2009) To date there is limited
empirical evidence for this assumption as tone is often
investigated as an average measure The inclusion of
negative and positive news as separate variables allows
us to study their distinct impact Furthermore the study
contributes by considering the impact of incoming non-
Western immigrants as well as the immigrant population
that resides in a country This allows us to see whether
people feel more threatened by the fact that immigrants
are entering their country or by the fact that more immi-
grants are permanently residing there
We investigate and compare the results from two
northern European countries (the Netherlands and
Denmark) which were selected based on a most similar
system design Comparative research is crucial for the
generalizability of effects and the comparison between
two countries allows for a more in-depth discussion of
the results These two countries are ideal as they are
compatible in many respects but they are different with
regard to one crucial point immigration history
Therefore the salience of the immigration issue also dif-
fers which may play a role in the general influence of
the media and RWDs Because we are interested in the
effects of contextual developments this study covers an
8-year period (from 2003 to 2010) using biannual data
The following sections present the most prominent
theories about the formation of attitudes towards immi-
gration The first three hypotheses largely replicate and
refine the results of previous studies using a slightly dif-
ferent approach It is pertinent to do this as we aim to
clarify ambiguous results found in previous studies
(Manevska and Achterberg 2013 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The final part of the theory section pro-
poses a contingency effect of different immigration-
related national histories and accordingly expects differ-
ential effects of the media
Real-World Developments
Many studies using the ethnic threat perspective on how
negative attitudes towards immigration take shape have
assessed the effect of national and regional immigration
inflows (Blumer 1958 LeVine and Campbell 1972
Scheepers et al 2002) This approach stems from group
conflict theory (LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and
Worchel 1979) and social identity theory (Tajfel and
Turner 1979) The latter states the natural need felt by
people to be part of a larger entity or group Individuals
strongly identify with group characteristics and to
maintain a positive perception of themselves they apply
positive labels to the in-group and negative labels to the
out-group This labelling may appear harmless but can
result in real intergroup conflict The group conflict the-
ory states that the scarcity of goods adds to intergroup
rivalry (LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and
Worchel 1979) This competition may revolve around
realistic resources (such as jobs and housing) or sym-
bolic resources (such as cultural identity values or pol-
itical power) (Meuleman and Lubbers 2013 Helbling
2014 Helbling and Kriesi 2014) Intergroup competi-
tion strengthens identification with the in-group (eg
natives) but creates negative associations with out-
groups (eg ethnic minorities) hence competition in-
creases perceived threat from out-groups
Goods become scarcer and perceived threat increases
when the competing groups become larger In relation
to immigrant groups in particular an increasing group
size increases anti-immigration sentiment (Scheepers
et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) In this study we
build on previous studies by investigating non-Western
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 269
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
immigrants the group that is considered to have the
largest impact (Schluter and Davidov 2013) In add-
ition we distinguish between incoming and residential
non-Western immigrants to see whether incoming im-
migrants or immigrants who take active part of society
cause feelings of threat Based on the literature how-
ever we expect the results to point in the same direction
and therefore we propose a single hypothesis
H1 An increasing non-Western immigrant population
leads to more negative immigration attitudes
Media Effects
Media Visibility
Mass media provide central information for peoplersquos
perceptions of others (Schluter and Davidov 2013) and
therefore the media are able to shape anti-minority
attitudes (Allport 1954 Blumler 1958) We assume
that the media have an influence above and beyond the
influence of RWDs after all media content appears to
show little overlap with RWDs (eg Vliegenthart and
Boomgaarden 2007 for the economic realm Goidel
and Langley 1995 Smith 1988) because of the noise
introduced by journalistic selection processes
(Shoemaker and Reese 1996) and the fact that immi-
gration inflows alone are not always newsworthy
However this mediated version of reality forms the
foundation of a nationrsquos collective knowledge Even
those who are not (frequently) exposed to news reports
are often made aware of media reality via interpersonal
conversations (Schmitt-Beck 2003 Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart 2009) Arguably most people have a
media-based impression of immigrants and immigration
which has the potential to shape their attitudes
Previous literature has investigated such media influ-
ences Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009) for ex-
ample investigated the effects of news coverage about
immigration in Germany They found that frequency
and tone of coverage affected anti-immigration atti-
tudes Vergeer et al (2000) established that exposure
to certain Dutch newspapers (ie those characterized
by negative reporting on immigrants) significantly
increased ethnic threat perceptions Schluter and
Davidov (2013) scrutinized the role of negative immi-
gration-related news reports on perceived ethnic threat
in Spain and found that these news reports affect
perceived group threat above and beyond the effect of
immigrant group size Schemer (2012) found that expos-
ure to positive news reduces negative out-group atti-
tudes among those who are less knowledgeable about
immigrants Media presence and tone thus play a vital
role in how the public perceives ethnic minorities
dependent and independent of individual media use or
background characteristics
In line with Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009)
we propose that frequent exposure to out-groups in the
media acts as a reminder about peoplersquos own identities
and their distinct differences from certain out-groups
(Tajfel and Turner 1979) In accordance with conflict
and social identity theory this reminder triggers feelings
of competition Therefore increased presence of immi-
grants in the media increases the odds of encountering
immigrants via media which can initiate the perception
of increased threat and negative out-group associations
(LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel
1979 Ward et al 2001)
H2 Increased visibility of the immigration issue in the
news increases negative immigration attitudes
Tone of Media Messages
Previous studies have often applied an implicit lsquoany
news is bad newsrsquo reasoning (ie an increase in media
salience coincides with an increase in negative messages
regarding immigration) Accordingly an increase in
media salience would provide more negative informa-
tion about minority groups which then would readily
attract the attention of the majority and increase nega-
tive immigration attitudes (Persson and Musher-
Eizenman 2005 Shrum 2009) However an increase in
media salience does not necessarily co-occur with an in-
crease in negative messages and so the found effects
might simply be due to an increase in media attention ra-
ther than tone It is therefore crucial to understand and
distinguish between the effects of media salience and
tone Furthermore Sorokarsquos asymmetrical influences
thesis (2006) states that people are generally more re-
sponsive to negative than to positive information Thus
it is likely that negative news will have a larger effect
than positive news even when there is no substantial
increase in negative news Therefore we distinguish be-
tween positive and negative message tone and investi-
gate whether and to what extent negative or positive
media coverage affects immigration attitudes
Previous research found that negative media environ-
ments produce negative immigrant stereotyping (Gilliam
and Iyengar 2000 Domke 2001 Schemer 2012)
negative evaluations of immigrants negative immigra-
tion attitudes and ethnic prejudice (Power et al 1996
Dixon and Azocar 2007 Boomgaarden and Vliegen-
thart 2009) Peoplersquos political preferences are often
270 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
guided by information from the news media (Sniderman
and Theriault 2004) Although these studies all show
that tone has an impact they fall short in distinguishing
between the impact of negative versus positive media
messages which we are able to do in this study
How might the tone of the media affect opinions
Zaller (1992) describes this process as follows people
receive information from the news and decide whether
to accept this information When formulating an opin-
ion people sample from this accepted information This
receive-accept-sample model (RAS) shows how people
make use of the news Previous research has shown that
this is a dynamic process and that each individual collec-
tion of accepted information changes over time in line
with the developments in the news (Schwenk 1988) We
argue that the dominant tone in the news affects the gen-
eral sample of peoplersquos accepted information because re-
cent information is the easiest to access cognitively
(Higgins 1989) Hence the flow of immigration news
coverage when heavily one-sided (ie predominantly
negative or positive) can change public opinion at large
(Zaller 1992 1996) A person that is confronted with
both a positive and a negative message on the same issue
will however not be affected by either of the two mes-
sages as the two messages cancel each other out (De
Vreese and Boomgaarden 2006) However in a pre-
dominantly negative media environment the likelihood
that people are confronted with negative messages in-
creases therefore the information they sample from be-
comes more negative and immigration attitudes will
become more negative as well The same logic applies to
a positive bias but we expect this to reduce anti-immi-
gration sentiment
H3a Negative news reports increase anti-immigration
attitudes whereas (H3b) positive news reports reduce
anti-immigration attitudes
Conditionality of Country Characteristics
Most Similar Systems Design
The countries were selected using a most-similar-systems
design (MSSD) The use of an MSSD is lsquobased on the
premise that systems as identical as possible with regard
to as many constitutive features as possible represent the
optimal samples for comparative researchrsquo (Przeworski
and Teune 1970 p 32) The idea behind this compara-
tive method is that by selecting similar cases most of the
contextual characteristics that might be of influence
otherwise are held constant Hence only those charac-
teristics on which the selected cases differ may generate
an effect This considerably reduces the number of op-
erative variables which is ideal when one deals with a
lsquosmall Nrsquo which is often the case in country comparative
research (Lijphart 1971) The MSSD allows us to rule
out potential country-specific confounding factors
related to politics economics and media For this study
it is crucial to consider countries that are similar in terms
of political system (mature democracies multiparty sys-
tems) economic situation (welfare status in the OECD
GDP top 20) media systems and media news outlets [a
combination of public and private television broad-
casters and a democratic corporatist model (Hallin and
Mancini 2004)] Additionally the countries should be
compatible with regard to the ethnic religious and cul-
tural background of the immigrant population1 (SCP
2009 Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011) We decided to compare the Netherlands and
Denmark because these countries fulfil these
requirements
Despite the clear similarities there is one important
difference Though both countries have dealt with immi-
gration since the 1970s and early 1980s the immigrant
population grew faster and larger in the Netherlands
(Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich 2011) For
decades immigration has played a crucial role in Dutch
politics public debates and the news media Attention
increased briefly after the assassinations of right-wing
politician Pim Fortuyn (in 2002) and filmmaker Theo
van Gogh (in 2004) (Vliegenthart and Roggeband
2007) Immigration has been a politicized issue in the
Netherlands since the early 1990s (ie a multicultural
society) the issue became politicized in Denmark in the
late 1990s only (ie with the founding of the Danish
Peoplersquos party in 1995) Hence the immigration topic
has been prominent for a longer period of time in the
Dutch context than in the Danish context Ceteris pari-
bus we tentatively propose that these country differ-
ences have led to different effects of the media and
RWDs even in the 2000s In the section below we elab-
orate how
Divergent Country Effects
Neuman (1990) stated that the public is especially
attuned to some issues while others receive lsquono more
than a collective yawnrsquo (p 162) An explanation for the
difference in public attention paid to issues is provided
by the classical theory of public response function by
Downs (1972) which describes a five-stage issue re-
sponse function (issue-attention-cycle) The pre-problem
stage a problem exists but has not been given any public
attention (yet) the discovery stage public attention to
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 271
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the issue is catalysed after the issue has passed the atten-
tion threshold the plateau stage enthusiasm for the
issue wanes and public attention stabilizes the decline
stage an inattentive phase in which the public is frus-
trated by the notion that the problem has no simple so-
lution and the post-problem stage the issue is old and
uninteresting and receives little attention
Arguably the stage of an issue is crucial to the
amount of received attention (eg media politics and
public opinion) and the willingness of the public to pay
attention to the issue to gain information and to
(re)formulate an opinion (Behr and Iyengar 1985
Neuman 1990) We argue that this issue stage may
moderate the effects of RWDs and the media and that a
higher level of public attention for an issue tightens the
relationship between RWDs media and public opinion
which causes the effects to be bigger By doing so we
are among the first to bring together media effects con-
ditioned by issue attention cycles
The question then is at what stage the two countries
in this study are located Reyes (2010) argues that in
America immigration is one of the lsquotop five recycled
issuesrsquo the issue is always present but it regains its im-
portance around election campaigns We think the situ-
ation in the two European countries is not too different
The issue remained important in both countries over the
entire period but gained attention around certain im-
portant events Because we cover a time span of several
years it is likely that the issue has passed through sev-
eral stages of the issue-attention cycle repeatedly
To make a better estimate of the stage of the immi-
gration issue in each of the two countries we consult
our data on overall media and public attention (see first
part of the results section)2 Here we see that Denmark
shows two large peaks in media and public opinion
whereas the Netherlands shows limited fluctuations in
media and public attention Based on the immigration
history of both countries described in the previous
section (Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011 also see footnote 1) and the descriptive data
we cautiously propose that the Netherlands has been
in the plateau and decline stage more than it has
been in the discovery stage in the early to late 2000s
whereas Denmark has spent relatively more time in the
discovery stage over the period of observation
Therefore we expect the influence of media and RWDs
on the public to be stronger in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
H4 RWDs and the media have a larger influence on
anti-immigration sentiment in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
Data and Method
The data were collected between 2003 and 2010 in
Denmark and between 2003 and 2009 in the
Netherlands We selected this period due to its stability
with regard to immigration policies presence of immi-
gration parties (Bommes and Sciortino 2011 Broch-
mann et al 2012) and economic prosperity3 By doing
so these structural developments do not impact our re-
sults We draw on three types of longitudinal data real
world data which were collected from the Eurostat
website media data including the total number of art-
icles about immigration and a random selection of news-
paper articles about immigration that were manually
coded by a group of trained coders (native speakers)4
and survey data for which several waves of the Euro-
barometer were used (ie from wave 591 to wave
742)
To analyse these longitudinal data we use a multile-
vel model with individuals nested within biyearly
periods (16 in Denmark and 14 in the Netherlands)
Because the dependent variable is dichotomous a logis-
tic version of this modelling technique5 is applied The
intra-class correlations (ICC)6 (012 in the Netherlands
and 016 in Denmark) indicate that attitudes (Level 1)
are correlated within each 6-month period (Level 2)
This means that country-level characteristics are rele-
vant and that a multilevel approach is required
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable stems from the Eurobarometer
which required the respondent to select the problem
they find most important from a list of 12 political issues
ranging from international economic competition
crime and unemployment to immigration7 (see
Supplementary Table A1 for the descriptive statistics
for this variable in each country)8 As Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart (2009) argue lsquoThe most important prob-
lem (MIP) question provides an utilizable proxy measure
for anti-immigration attitudes By asking about the most
important problem the question prescribes a negative
evaluative component If people consider immigration
the prime problem the nation is facing it is reasonable
to interpret this immigration problem perception as a
measure of anti-immigration attitudesrsquo (p 522) The au-
thors elaborate on their statement by comparing the
MIP responses to the responses to more explicit anti-im-
migration sentiment measures We ran similar checks on
our data by comparing the results of the MIP question
to immigrant attitude questions that were asked in
one of the waves of the Eurobarometer Our results
confirmed the assumption by Boomgaarden and
272 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Vliegenthart and indicate that this MIP question meas-
ures attitudes towards the issue (Wlezien 2005)9
Media Variables
The current study uses coded newspaper articles to rep-
resent the news media environment To capture a wide
news spectrum newspapers with a wide range of polit-
ical views were selected De Telegraaf and De
Volkskrant in the Netherlands and Jyllands Posten and
Politiken in Denmark De Telegraaf is the only tabloid-
like newspaper in the Netherlands and one of the oldest
and largest Dutch dailies to date It is known for its rela-
tively right-wing perspective De Volkskrant is a large
central-leftist newspaper it is also one of the largest
newspapers in the Netherlands and has been in existence
since the early 1900s Jyllands Posten one of the largest
newspapers in Denmark became internationally infam-
ous for its portrait of Mohammed in 2005 It is a liberal
central-right broadsheet newspaper One of its main
competitors is Politiken the leading Danish newspaper
which was originally connected to the Danish Social
Liberal Party but declared its independence in the
1970s
The search terms10 used to collect the data from
these newspapers on immigration and closely related
topics were created in Dutch and translated into
Danish A sample of monthly articles per country11 was
randomly selected from the collected data and manually
coded by nine native speakers Media salience is defined
as the percentage of change compared with the previous
6-month period for each country the total number of
newspaper articles about immigration are used to create
this variable (see Figure 1 for absolute frequencies and
Supplementary Table A1 in Appendix 4 for descriptive
statistics)
To code tone we organized intensive coding sessions
Coders were instructed to read English language mater-
ial which enabled us to check the inter-coder reliability
for all of the coders at once To code tone coders read
the articles and answered the following question lsquoHow
would you say the main topic is discussedrsquo The re-
sponses were lsquoin a negative wayrsquo lsquoin a balanced wayrsquo
lsquoin a positive wayrsquo or lsquoin a neutral wayrsquo For instance if
an article talked about immigrants in a derogatory man-
ner saying that their level of integration is too low this
would clearly be negative from an immigrantrsquos point of
view However if an article discussed the issue for in-
stance in terms of stimulating employment for immi-
grants the tone would be positive from this perspective
Eventually all the coders were asked to code English
newspaper articles and once the inter-coder reliability
of this English material was up to standard the coders
were given the coding material in their native language
(ie Dutch and Danish) The percent agreement was 63
per cent among the five Dutch coders and 65 per cent
among the four Danish coders These reliability scores
are reasonable but not perfect therefore the results of
the tone analysis are interpreted with caution
As we are interested in the difference between the ef-
fects of positive and negative news we defined two tone
variables These were created by calculating the
28943175
3779 3933 38184012 4144
4640
3820 3813 3828
31852864
3253 3225
3684
46424445 4550
7261
6791
5717 5670
66176356
8024
7334
6633
5136
4082
3577
2500
3500
4500
5500
6500
7500
8500
The Netherlands
Denmark
Figure 1 Salience in news media in the two countries across time (absolute number of articles on immigration)
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 273
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
However the amount of media coverage of immigration
does not accurately represent actual immigrant inflows
(Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) Furthermore
Sides and Citrin (2007) found a systematic discrepancy
between peoplersquos estimates and the real size of the immi-
grant population they argue that the discrepancy is due
to the visibility of minority groups in the media which
differs from reality Changes in the media environment
(see also Jerit et al 2006)mdasheither alterations in the
attention given to the issue or changes in the general va-
lence of news reportsmdashmay have a substantial impact
on immigration attitudes above and beyond that of
RWDs Because it is unclear how the media play a role
alongside RWDs we propose the following research
question To what extent do the size of the immigrant
population the media visibility and the tone of news re-
ports about immigration affect immigration attitudes
Scholars have established effects of the media on
immigration attitudes and related behaviors in various
European countries (Esser and Brosius 1996 Vergeer
et al 2000 Walgrave and De Swert 2004
Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart 2007 2009 Schemer
2012 Schluter and Davidov 2013) However most of
these studies are based on single case or cross-sectional
data And only occasionally do they include systematic-
ally coded data of the content of the news (for example
see Schemer 2012) This study expands on previous
studies by investigating the presence of the immigration
issue in the media as well as the tone of news reports re-
garding this issue using manually coded content data
Here the inclusion of tone is an important addition
Often the effects caused by the presence of media cover-
age (ie salience or exposure) are attributable to the
negative nature of news messages (Persson and Musher-
Eizenman 2005 Shrum 2009) To date there is limited
empirical evidence for this assumption as tone is often
investigated as an average measure The inclusion of
negative and positive news as separate variables allows
us to study their distinct impact Furthermore the study
contributes by considering the impact of incoming non-
Western immigrants as well as the immigrant population
that resides in a country This allows us to see whether
people feel more threatened by the fact that immigrants
are entering their country or by the fact that more immi-
grants are permanently residing there
We investigate and compare the results from two
northern European countries (the Netherlands and
Denmark) which were selected based on a most similar
system design Comparative research is crucial for the
generalizability of effects and the comparison between
two countries allows for a more in-depth discussion of
the results These two countries are ideal as they are
compatible in many respects but they are different with
regard to one crucial point immigration history
Therefore the salience of the immigration issue also dif-
fers which may play a role in the general influence of
the media and RWDs Because we are interested in the
effects of contextual developments this study covers an
8-year period (from 2003 to 2010) using biannual data
The following sections present the most prominent
theories about the formation of attitudes towards immi-
gration The first three hypotheses largely replicate and
refine the results of previous studies using a slightly dif-
ferent approach It is pertinent to do this as we aim to
clarify ambiguous results found in previous studies
(Manevska and Achterberg 2013 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The final part of the theory section pro-
poses a contingency effect of different immigration-
related national histories and accordingly expects differ-
ential effects of the media
Real-World Developments
Many studies using the ethnic threat perspective on how
negative attitudes towards immigration take shape have
assessed the effect of national and regional immigration
inflows (Blumer 1958 LeVine and Campbell 1972
Scheepers et al 2002) This approach stems from group
conflict theory (LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and
Worchel 1979) and social identity theory (Tajfel and
Turner 1979) The latter states the natural need felt by
people to be part of a larger entity or group Individuals
strongly identify with group characteristics and to
maintain a positive perception of themselves they apply
positive labels to the in-group and negative labels to the
out-group This labelling may appear harmless but can
result in real intergroup conflict The group conflict the-
ory states that the scarcity of goods adds to intergroup
rivalry (LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and
Worchel 1979) This competition may revolve around
realistic resources (such as jobs and housing) or sym-
bolic resources (such as cultural identity values or pol-
itical power) (Meuleman and Lubbers 2013 Helbling
2014 Helbling and Kriesi 2014) Intergroup competi-
tion strengthens identification with the in-group (eg
natives) but creates negative associations with out-
groups (eg ethnic minorities) hence competition in-
creases perceived threat from out-groups
Goods become scarcer and perceived threat increases
when the competing groups become larger In relation
to immigrant groups in particular an increasing group
size increases anti-immigration sentiment (Scheepers
et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) In this study we
build on previous studies by investigating non-Western
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 269
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
immigrants the group that is considered to have the
largest impact (Schluter and Davidov 2013) In add-
ition we distinguish between incoming and residential
non-Western immigrants to see whether incoming im-
migrants or immigrants who take active part of society
cause feelings of threat Based on the literature how-
ever we expect the results to point in the same direction
and therefore we propose a single hypothesis
H1 An increasing non-Western immigrant population
leads to more negative immigration attitudes
Media Effects
Media Visibility
Mass media provide central information for peoplersquos
perceptions of others (Schluter and Davidov 2013) and
therefore the media are able to shape anti-minority
attitudes (Allport 1954 Blumler 1958) We assume
that the media have an influence above and beyond the
influence of RWDs after all media content appears to
show little overlap with RWDs (eg Vliegenthart and
Boomgaarden 2007 for the economic realm Goidel
and Langley 1995 Smith 1988) because of the noise
introduced by journalistic selection processes
(Shoemaker and Reese 1996) and the fact that immi-
gration inflows alone are not always newsworthy
However this mediated version of reality forms the
foundation of a nationrsquos collective knowledge Even
those who are not (frequently) exposed to news reports
are often made aware of media reality via interpersonal
conversations (Schmitt-Beck 2003 Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart 2009) Arguably most people have a
media-based impression of immigrants and immigration
which has the potential to shape their attitudes
Previous literature has investigated such media influ-
ences Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009) for ex-
ample investigated the effects of news coverage about
immigration in Germany They found that frequency
and tone of coverage affected anti-immigration atti-
tudes Vergeer et al (2000) established that exposure
to certain Dutch newspapers (ie those characterized
by negative reporting on immigrants) significantly
increased ethnic threat perceptions Schluter and
Davidov (2013) scrutinized the role of negative immi-
gration-related news reports on perceived ethnic threat
in Spain and found that these news reports affect
perceived group threat above and beyond the effect of
immigrant group size Schemer (2012) found that expos-
ure to positive news reduces negative out-group atti-
tudes among those who are less knowledgeable about
immigrants Media presence and tone thus play a vital
role in how the public perceives ethnic minorities
dependent and independent of individual media use or
background characteristics
In line with Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009)
we propose that frequent exposure to out-groups in the
media acts as a reminder about peoplersquos own identities
and their distinct differences from certain out-groups
(Tajfel and Turner 1979) In accordance with conflict
and social identity theory this reminder triggers feelings
of competition Therefore increased presence of immi-
grants in the media increases the odds of encountering
immigrants via media which can initiate the perception
of increased threat and negative out-group associations
(LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel
1979 Ward et al 2001)
H2 Increased visibility of the immigration issue in the
news increases negative immigration attitudes
Tone of Media Messages
Previous studies have often applied an implicit lsquoany
news is bad newsrsquo reasoning (ie an increase in media
salience coincides with an increase in negative messages
regarding immigration) Accordingly an increase in
media salience would provide more negative informa-
tion about minority groups which then would readily
attract the attention of the majority and increase nega-
tive immigration attitudes (Persson and Musher-
Eizenman 2005 Shrum 2009) However an increase in
media salience does not necessarily co-occur with an in-
crease in negative messages and so the found effects
might simply be due to an increase in media attention ra-
ther than tone It is therefore crucial to understand and
distinguish between the effects of media salience and
tone Furthermore Sorokarsquos asymmetrical influences
thesis (2006) states that people are generally more re-
sponsive to negative than to positive information Thus
it is likely that negative news will have a larger effect
than positive news even when there is no substantial
increase in negative news Therefore we distinguish be-
tween positive and negative message tone and investi-
gate whether and to what extent negative or positive
media coverage affects immigration attitudes
Previous research found that negative media environ-
ments produce negative immigrant stereotyping (Gilliam
and Iyengar 2000 Domke 2001 Schemer 2012)
negative evaluations of immigrants negative immigra-
tion attitudes and ethnic prejudice (Power et al 1996
Dixon and Azocar 2007 Boomgaarden and Vliegen-
thart 2009) Peoplersquos political preferences are often
270 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
guided by information from the news media (Sniderman
and Theriault 2004) Although these studies all show
that tone has an impact they fall short in distinguishing
between the impact of negative versus positive media
messages which we are able to do in this study
How might the tone of the media affect opinions
Zaller (1992) describes this process as follows people
receive information from the news and decide whether
to accept this information When formulating an opin-
ion people sample from this accepted information This
receive-accept-sample model (RAS) shows how people
make use of the news Previous research has shown that
this is a dynamic process and that each individual collec-
tion of accepted information changes over time in line
with the developments in the news (Schwenk 1988) We
argue that the dominant tone in the news affects the gen-
eral sample of peoplersquos accepted information because re-
cent information is the easiest to access cognitively
(Higgins 1989) Hence the flow of immigration news
coverage when heavily one-sided (ie predominantly
negative or positive) can change public opinion at large
(Zaller 1992 1996) A person that is confronted with
both a positive and a negative message on the same issue
will however not be affected by either of the two mes-
sages as the two messages cancel each other out (De
Vreese and Boomgaarden 2006) However in a pre-
dominantly negative media environment the likelihood
that people are confronted with negative messages in-
creases therefore the information they sample from be-
comes more negative and immigration attitudes will
become more negative as well The same logic applies to
a positive bias but we expect this to reduce anti-immi-
gration sentiment
H3a Negative news reports increase anti-immigration
attitudes whereas (H3b) positive news reports reduce
anti-immigration attitudes
Conditionality of Country Characteristics
Most Similar Systems Design
The countries were selected using a most-similar-systems
design (MSSD) The use of an MSSD is lsquobased on the
premise that systems as identical as possible with regard
to as many constitutive features as possible represent the
optimal samples for comparative researchrsquo (Przeworski
and Teune 1970 p 32) The idea behind this compara-
tive method is that by selecting similar cases most of the
contextual characteristics that might be of influence
otherwise are held constant Hence only those charac-
teristics on which the selected cases differ may generate
an effect This considerably reduces the number of op-
erative variables which is ideal when one deals with a
lsquosmall Nrsquo which is often the case in country comparative
research (Lijphart 1971) The MSSD allows us to rule
out potential country-specific confounding factors
related to politics economics and media For this study
it is crucial to consider countries that are similar in terms
of political system (mature democracies multiparty sys-
tems) economic situation (welfare status in the OECD
GDP top 20) media systems and media news outlets [a
combination of public and private television broad-
casters and a democratic corporatist model (Hallin and
Mancini 2004)] Additionally the countries should be
compatible with regard to the ethnic religious and cul-
tural background of the immigrant population1 (SCP
2009 Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011) We decided to compare the Netherlands and
Denmark because these countries fulfil these
requirements
Despite the clear similarities there is one important
difference Though both countries have dealt with immi-
gration since the 1970s and early 1980s the immigrant
population grew faster and larger in the Netherlands
(Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich 2011) For
decades immigration has played a crucial role in Dutch
politics public debates and the news media Attention
increased briefly after the assassinations of right-wing
politician Pim Fortuyn (in 2002) and filmmaker Theo
van Gogh (in 2004) (Vliegenthart and Roggeband
2007) Immigration has been a politicized issue in the
Netherlands since the early 1990s (ie a multicultural
society) the issue became politicized in Denmark in the
late 1990s only (ie with the founding of the Danish
Peoplersquos party in 1995) Hence the immigration topic
has been prominent for a longer period of time in the
Dutch context than in the Danish context Ceteris pari-
bus we tentatively propose that these country differ-
ences have led to different effects of the media and
RWDs even in the 2000s In the section below we elab-
orate how
Divergent Country Effects
Neuman (1990) stated that the public is especially
attuned to some issues while others receive lsquono more
than a collective yawnrsquo (p 162) An explanation for the
difference in public attention paid to issues is provided
by the classical theory of public response function by
Downs (1972) which describes a five-stage issue re-
sponse function (issue-attention-cycle) The pre-problem
stage a problem exists but has not been given any public
attention (yet) the discovery stage public attention to
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 271
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the issue is catalysed after the issue has passed the atten-
tion threshold the plateau stage enthusiasm for the
issue wanes and public attention stabilizes the decline
stage an inattentive phase in which the public is frus-
trated by the notion that the problem has no simple so-
lution and the post-problem stage the issue is old and
uninteresting and receives little attention
Arguably the stage of an issue is crucial to the
amount of received attention (eg media politics and
public opinion) and the willingness of the public to pay
attention to the issue to gain information and to
(re)formulate an opinion (Behr and Iyengar 1985
Neuman 1990) We argue that this issue stage may
moderate the effects of RWDs and the media and that a
higher level of public attention for an issue tightens the
relationship between RWDs media and public opinion
which causes the effects to be bigger By doing so we
are among the first to bring together media effects con-
ditioned by issue attention cycles
The question then is at what stage the two countries
in this study are located Reyes (2010) argues that in
America immigration is one of the lsquotop five recycled
issuesrsquo the issue is always present but it regains its im-
portance around election campaigns We think the situ-
ation in the two European countries is not too different
The issue remained important in both countries over the
entire period but gained attention around certain im-
portant events Because we cover a time span of several
years it is likely that the issue has passed through sev-
eral stages of the issue-attention cycle repeatedly
To make a better estimate of the stage of the immi-
gration issue in each of the two countries we consult
our data on overall media and public attention (see first
part of the results section)2 Here we see that Denmark
shows two large peaks in media and public opinion
whereas the Netherlands shows limited fluctuations in
media and public attention Based on the immigration
history of both countries described in the previous
section (Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011 also see footnote 1) and the descriptive data
we cautiously propose that the Netherlands has been
in the plateau and decline stage more than it has
been in the discovery stage in the early to late 2000s
whereas Denmark has spent relatively more time in the
discovery stage over the period of observation
Therefore we expect the influence of media and RWDs
on the public to be stronger in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
H4 RWDs and the media have a larger influence on
anti-immigration sentiment in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
Data and Method
The data were collected between 2003 and 2010 in
Denmark and between 2003 and 2009 in the
Netherlands We selected this period due to its stability
with regard to immigration policies presence of immi-
gration parties (Bommes and Sciortino 2011 Broch-
mann et al 2012) and economic prosperity3 By doing
so these structural developments do not impact our re-
sults We draw on three types of longitudinal data real
world data which were collected from the Eurostat
website media data including the total number of art-
icles about immigration and a random selection of news-
paper articles about immigration that were manually
coded by a group of trained coders (native speakers)4
and survey data for which several waves of the Euro-
barometer were used (ie from wave 591 to wave
742)
To analyse these longitudinal data we use a multile-
vel model with individuals nested within biyearly
periods (16 in Denmark and 14 in the Netherlands)
Because the dependent variable is dichotomous a logis-
tic version of this modelling technique5 is applied The
intra-class correlations (ICC)6 (012 in the Netherlands
and 016 in Denmark) indicate that attitudes (Level 1)
are correlated within each 6-month period (Level 2)
This means that country-level characteristics are rele-
vant and that a multilevel approach is required
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable stems from the Eurobarometer
which required the respondent to select the problem
they find most important from a list of 12 political issues
ranging from international economic competition
crime and unemployment to immigration7 (see
Supplementary Table A1 for the descriptive statistics
for this variable in each country)8 As Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart (2009) argue lsquoThe most important prob-
lem (MIP) question provides an utilizable proxy measure
for anti-immigration attitudes By asking about the most
important problem the question prescribes a negative
evaluative component If people consider immigration
the prime problem the nation is facing it is reasonable
to interpret this immigration problem perception as a
measure of anti-immigration attitudesrsquo (p 522) The au-
thors elaborate on their statement by comparing the
MIP responses to the responses to more explicit anti-im-
migration sentiment measures We ran similar checks on
our data by comparing the results of the MIP question
to immigrant attitude questions that were asked in
one of the waves of the Eurobarometer Our results
confirmed the assumption by Boomgaarden and
272 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Vliegenthart and indicate that this MIP question meas-
ures attitudes towards the issue (Wlezien 2005)9
Media Variables
The current study uses coded newspaper articles to rep-
resent the news media environment To capture a wide
news spectrum newspapers with a wide range of polit-
ical views were selected De Telegraaf and De
Volkskrant in the Netherlands and Jyllands Posten and
Politiken in Denmark De Telegraaf is the only tabloid-
like newspaper in the Netherlands and one of the oldest
and largest Dutch dailies to date It is known for its rela-
tively right-wing perspective De Volkskrant is a large
central-leftist newspaper it is also one of the largest
newspapers in the Netherlands and has been in existence
since the early 1900s Jyllands Posten one of the largest
newspapers in Denmark became internationally infam-
ous for its portrait of Mohammed in 2005 It is a liberal
central-right broadsheet newspaper One of its main
competitors is Politiken the leading Danish newspaper
which was originally connected to the Danish Social
Liberal Party but declared its independence in the
1970s
The search terms10 used to collect the data from
these newspapers on immigration and closely related
topics were created in Dutch and translated into
Danish A sample of monthly articles per country11 was
randomly selected from the collected data and manually
coded by nine native speakers Media salience is defined
as the percentage of change compared with the previous
6-month period for each country the total number of
newspaper articles about immigration are used to create
this variable (see Figure 1 for absolute frequencies and
Supplementary Table A1 in Appendix 4 for descriptive
statistics)
To code tone we organized intensive coding sessions
Coders were instructed to read English language mater-
ial which enabled us to check the inter-coder reliability
for all of the coders at once To code tone coders read
the articles and answered the following question lsquoHow
would you say the main topic is discussedrsquo The re-
sponses were lsquoin a negative wayrsquo lsquoin a balanced wayrsquo
lsquoin a positive wayrsquo or lsquoin a neutral wayrsquo For instance if
an article talked about immigrants in a derogatory man-
ner saying that their level of integration is too low this
would clearly be negative from an immigrantrsquos point of
view However if an article discussed the issue for in-
stance in terms of stimulating employment for immi-
grants the tone would be positive from this perspective
Eventually all the coders were asked to code English
newspaper articles and once the inter-coder reliability
of this English material was up to standard the coders
were given the coding material in their native language
(ie Dutch and Danish) The percent agreement was 63
per cent among the five Dutch coders and 65 per cent
among the four Danish coders These reliability scores
are reasonable but not perfect therefore the results of
the tone analysis are interpreted with caution
As we are interested in the difference between the ef-
fects of positive and negative news we defined two tone
variables These were created by calculating the
28943175
3779 3933 38184012 4144
4640
3820 3813 3828
31852864
3253 3225
3684
46424445 4550
7261
6791
5717 5670
66176356
8024
7334
6633
5136
4082
3577
2500
3500
4500
5500
6500
7500
8500
The Netherlands
Denmark
Figure 1 Salience in news media in the two countries across time (absolute number of articles on immigration)
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 273
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
immigrants the group that is considered to have the
largest impact (Schluter and Davidov 2013) In add-
ition we distinguish between incoming and residential
non-Western immigrants to see whether incoming im-
migrants or immigrants who take active part of society
cause feelings of threat Based on the literature how-
ever we expect the results to point in the same direction
and therefore we propose a single hypothesis
H1 An increasing non-Western immigrant population
leads to more negative immigration attitudes
Media Effects
Media Visibility
Mass media provide central information for peoplersquos
perceptions of others (Schluter and Davidov 2013) and
therefore the media are able to shape anti-minority
attitudes (Allport 1954 Blumler 1958) We assume
that the media have an influence above and beyond the
influence of RWDs after all media content appears to
show little overlap with RWDs (eg Vliegenthart and
Boomgaarden 2007 for the economic realm Goidel
and Langley 1995 Smith 1988) because of the noise
introduced by journalistic selection processes
(Shoemaker and Reese 1996) and the fact that immi-
gration inflows alone are not always newsworthy
However this mediated version of reality forms the
foundation of a nationrsquos collective knowledge Even
those who are not (frequently) exposed to news reports
are often made aware of media reality via interpersonal
conversations (Schmitt-Beck 2003 Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart 2009) Arguably most people have a
media-based impression of immigrants and immigration
which has the potential to shape their attitudes
Previous literature has investigated such media influ-
ences Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009) for ex-
ample investigated the effects of news coverage about
immigration in Germany They found that frequency
and tone of coverage affected anti-immigration atti-
tudes Vergeer et al (2000) established that exposure
to certain Dutch newspapers (ie those characterized
by negative reporting on immigrants) significantly
increased ethnic threat perceptions Schluter and
Davidov (2013) scrutinized the role of negative immi-
gration-related news reports on perceived ethnic threat
in Spain and found that these news reports affect
perceived group threat above and beyond the effect of
immigrant group size Schemer (2012) found that expos-
ure to positive news reduces negative out-group atti-
tudes among those who are less knowledgeable about
immigrants Media presence and tone thus play a vital
role in how the public perceives ethnic minorities
dependent and independent of individual media use or
background characteristics
In line with Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart (2009)
we propose that frequent exposure to out-groups in the
media acts as a reminder about peoplersquos own identities
and their distinct differences from certain out-groups
(Tajfel and Turner 1979) In accordance with conflict
and social identity theory this reminder triggers feelings
of competition Therefore increased presence of immi-
grants in the media increases the odds of encountering
immigrants via media which can initiate the perception
of increased threat and negative out-group associations
(LeVine and Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel
1979 Ward et al 2001)
H2 Increased visibility of the immigration issue in the
news increases negative immigration attitudes
Tone of Media Messages
Previous studies have often applied an implicit lsquoany
news is bad newsrsquo reasoning (ie an increase in media
salience coincides with an increase in negative messages
regarding immigration) Accordingly an increase in
media salience would provide more negative informa-
tion about minority groups which then would readily
attract the attention of the majority and increase nega-
tive immigration attitudes (Persson and Musher-
Eizenman 2005 Shrum 2009) However an increase in
media salience does not necessarily co-occur with an in-
crease in negative messages and so the found effects
might simply be due to an increase in media attention ra-
ther than tone It is therefore crucial to understand and
distinguish between the effects of media salience and
tone Furthermore Sorokarsquos asymmetrical influences
thesis (2006) states that people are generally more re-
sponsive to negative than to positive information Thus
it is likely that negative news will have a larger effect
than positive news even when there is no substantial
increase in negative news Therefore we distinguish be-
tween positive and negative message tone and investi-
gate whether and to what extent negative or positive
media coverage affects immigration attitudes
Previous research found that negative media environ-
ments produce negative immigrant stereotyping (Gilliam
and Iyengar 2000 Domke 2001 Schemer 2012)
negative evaluations of immigrants negative immigra-
tion attitudes and ethnic prejudice (Power et al 1996
Dixon and Azocar 2007 Boomgaarden and Vliegen-
thart 2009) Peoplersquos political preferences are often
270 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
guided by information from the news media (Sniderman
and Theriault 2004) Although these studies all show
that tone has an impact they fall short in distinguishing
between the impact of negative versus positive media
messages which we are able to do in this study
How might the tone of the media affect opinions
Zaller (1992) describes this process as follows people
receive information from the news and decide whether
to accept this information When formulating an opin-
ion people sample from this accepted information This
receive-accept-sample model (RAS) shows how people
make use of the news Previous research has shown that
this is a dynamic process and that each individual collec-
tion of accepted information changes over time in line
with the developments in the news (Schwenk 1988) We
argue that the dominant tone in the news affects the gen-
eral sample of peoplersquos accepted information because re-
cent information is the easiest to access cognitively
(Higgins 1989) Hence the flow of immigration news
coverage when heavily one-sided (ie predominantly
negative or positive) can change public opinion at large
(Zaller 1992 1996) A person that is confronted with
both a positive and a negative message on the same issue
will however not be affected by either of the two mes-
sages as the two messages cancel each other out (De
Vreese and Boomgaarden 2006) However in a pre-
dominantly negative media environment the likelihood
that people are confronted with negative messages in-
creases therefore the information they sample from be-
comes more negative and immigration attitudes will
become more negative as well The same logic applies to
a positive bias but we expect this to reduce anti-immi-
gration sentiment
H3a Negative news reports increase anti-immigration
attitudes whereas (H3b) positive news reports reduce
anti-immigration attitudes
Conditionality of Country Characteristics
Most Similar Systems Design
The countries were selected using a most-similar-systems
design (MSSD) The use of an MSSD is lsquobased on the
premise that systems as identical as possible with regard
to as many constitutive features as possible represent the
optimal samples for comparative researchrsquo (Przeworski
and Teune 1970 p 32) The idea behind this compara-
tive method is that by selecting similar cases most of the
contextual characteristics that might be of influence
otherwise are held constant Hence only those charac-
teristics on which the selected cases differ may generate
an effect This considerably reduces the number of op-
erative variables which is ideal when one deals with a
lsquosmall Nrsquo which is often the case in country comparative
research (Lijphart 1971) The MSSD allows us to rule
out potential country-specific confounding factors
related to politics economics and media For this study
it is crucial to consider countries that are similar in terms
of political system (mature democracies multiparty sys-
tems) economic situation (welfare status in the OECD
GDP top 20) media systems and media news outlets [a
combination of public and private television broad-
casters and a democratic corporatist model (Hallin and
Mancini 2004)] Additionally the countries should be
compatible with regard to the ethnic religious and cul-
tural background of the immigrant population1 (SCP
2009 Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011) We decided to compare the Netherlands and
Denmark because these countries fulfil these
requirements
Despite the clear similarities there is one important
difference Though both countries have dealt with immi-
gration since the 1970s and early 1980s the immigrant
population grew faster and larger in the Netherlands
(Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich 2011) For
decades immigration has played a crucial role in Dutch
politics public debates and the news media Attention
increased briefly after the assassinations of right-wing
politician Pim Fortuyn (in 2002) and filmmaker Theo
van Gogh (in 2004) (Vliegenthart and Roggeband
2007) Immigration has been a politicized issue in the
Netherlands since the early 1990s (ie a multicultural
society) the issue became politicized in Denmark in the
late 1990s only (ie with the founding of the Danish
Peoplersquos party in 1995) Hence the immigration topic
has been prominent for a longer period of time in the
Dutch context than in the Danish context Ceteris pari-
bus we tentatively propose that these country differ-
ences have led to different effects of the media and
RWDs even in the 2000s In the section below we elab-
orate how
Divergent Country Effects
Neuman (1990) stated that the public is especially
attuned to some issues while others receive lsquono more
than a collective yawnrsquo (p 162) An explanation for the
difference in public attention paid to issues is provided
by the classical theory of public response function by
Downs (1972) which describes a five-stage issue re-
sponse function (issue-attention-cycle) The pre-problem
stage a problem exists but has not been given any public
attention (yet) the discovery stage public attention to
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 271
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the issue is catalysed after the issue has passed the atten-
tion threshold the plateau stage enthusiasm for the
issue wanes and public attention stabilizes the decline
stage an inattentive phase in which the public is frus-
trated by the notion that the problem has no simple so-
lution and the post-problem stage the issue is old and
uninteresting and receives little attention
Arguably the stage of an issue is crucial to the
amount of received attention (eg media politics and
public opinion) and the willingness of the public to pay
attention to the issue to gain information and to
(re)formulate an opinion (Behr and Iyengar 1985
Neuman 1990) We argue that this issue stage may
moderate the effects of RWDs and the media and that a
higher level of public attention for an issue tightens the
relationship between RWDs media and public opinion
which causes the effects to be bigger By doing so we
are among the first to bring together media effects con-
ditioned by issue attention cycles
The question then is at what stage the two countries
in this study are located Reyes (2010) argues that in
America immigration is one of the lsquotop five recycled
issuesrsquo the issue is always present but it regains its im-
portance around election campaigns We think the situ-
ation in the two European countries is not too different
The issue remained important in both countries over the
entire period but gained attention around certain im-
portant events Because we cover a time span of several
years it is likely that the issue has passed through sev-
eral stages of the issue-attention cycle repeatedly
To make a better estimate of the stage of the immi-
gration issue in each of the two countries we consult
our data on overall media and public attention (see first
part of the results section)2 Here we see that Denmark
shows two large peaks in media and public opinion
whereas the Netherlands shows limited fluctuations in
media and public attention Based on the immigration
history of both countries described in the previous
section (Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011 also see footnote 1) and the descriptive data
we cautiously propose that the Netherlands has been
in the plateau and decline stage more than it has
been in the discovery stage in the early to late 2000s
whereas Denmark has spent relatively more time in the
discovery stage over the period of observation
Therefore we expect the influence of media and RWDs
on the public to be stronger in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
H4 RWDs and the media have a larger influence on
anti-immigration sentiment in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
Data and Method
The data were collected between 2003 and 2010 in
Denmark and between 2003 and 2009 in the
Netherlands We selected this period due to its stability
with regard to immigration policies presence of immi-
gration parties (Bommes and Sciortino 2011 Broch-
mann et al 2012) and economic prosperity3 By doing
so these structural developments do not impact our re-
sults We draw on three types of longitudinal data real
world data which were collected from the Eurostat
website media data including the total number of art-
icles about immigration and a random selection of news-
paper articles about immigration that were manually
coded by a group of trained coders (native speakers)4
and survey data for which several waves of the Euro-
barometer were used (ie from wave 591 to wave
742)
To analyse these longitudinal data we use a multile-
vel model with individuals nested within biyearly
periods (16 in Denmark and 14 in the Netherlands)
Because the dependent variable is dichotomous a logis-
tic version of this modelling technique5 is applied The
intra-class correlations (ICC)6 (012 in the Netherlands
and 016 in Denmark) indicate that attitudes (Level 1)
are correlated within each 6-month period (Level 2)
This means that country-level characteristics are rele-
vant and that a multilevel approach is required
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable stems from the Eurobarometer
which required the respondent to select the problem
they find most important from a list of 12 political issues
ranging from international economic competition
crime and unemployment to immigration7 (see
Supplementary Table A1 for the descriptive statistics
for this variable in each country)8 As Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart (2009) argue lsquoThe most important prob-
lem (MIP) question provides an utilizable proxy measure
for anti-immigration attitudes By asking about the most
important problem the question prescribes a negative
evaluative component If people consider immigration
the prime problem the nation is facing it is reasonable
to interpret this immigration problem perception as a
measure of anti-immigration attitudesrsquo (p 522) The au-
thors elaborate on their statement by comparing the
MIP responses to the responses to more explicit anti-im-
migration sentiment measures We ran similar checks on
our data by comparing the results of the MIP question
to immigrant attitude questions that were asked in
one of the waves of the Eurobarometer Our results
confirmed the assumption by Boomgaarden and
272 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Vliegenthart and indicate that this MIP question meas-
ures attitudes towards the issue (Wlezien 2005)9
Media Variables
The current study uses coded newspaper articles to rep-
resent the news media environment To capture a wide
news spectrum newspapers with a wide range of polit-
ical views were selected De Telegraaf and De
Volkskrant in the Netherlands and Jyllands Posten and
Politiken in Denmark De Telegraaf is the only tabloid-
like newspaper in the Netherlands and one of the oldest
and largest Dutch dailies to date It is known for its rela-
tively right-wing perspective De Volkskrant is a large
central-leftist newspaper it is also one of the largest
newspapers in the Netherlands and has been in existence
since the early 1900s Jyllands Posten one of the largest
newspapers in Denmark became internationally infam-
ous for its portrait of Mohammed in 2005 It is a liberal
central-right broadsheet newspaper One of its main
competitors is Politiken the leading Danish newspaper
which was originally connected to the Danish Social
Liberal Party but declared its independence in the
1970s
The search terms10 used to collect the data from
these newspapers on immigration and closely related
topics were created in Dutch and translated into
Danish A sample of monthly articles per country11 was
randomly selected from the collected data and manually
coded by nine native speakers Media salience is defined
as the percentage of change compared with the previous
6-month period for each country the total number of
newspaper articles about immigration are used to create
this variable (see Figure 1 for absolute frequencies and
Supplementary Table A1 in Appendix 4 for descriptive
statistics)
To code tone we organized intensive coding sessions
Coders were instructed to read English language mater-
ial which enabled us to check the inter-coder reliability
for all of the coders at once To code tone coders read
the articles and answered the following question lsquoHow
would you say the main topic is discussedrsquo The re-
sponses were lsquoin a negative wayrsquo lsquoin a balanced wayrsquo
lsquoin a positive wayrsquo or lsquoin a neutral wayrsquo For instance if
an article talked about immigrants in a derogatory man-
ner saying that their level of integration is too low this
would clearly be negative from an immigrantrsquos point of
view However if an article discussed the issue for in-
stance in terms of stimulating employment for immi-
grants the tone would be positive from this perspective
Eventually all the coders were asked to code English
newspaper articles and once the inter-coder reliability
of this English material was up to standard the coders
were given the coding material in their native language
(ie Dutch and Danish) The percent agreement was 63
per cent among the five Dutch coders and 65 per cent
among the four Danish coders These reliability scores
are reasonable but not perfect therefore the results of
the tone analysis are interpreted with caution
As we are interested in the difference between the ef-
fects of positive and negative news we defined two tone
variables These were created by calculating the
28943175
3779 3933 38184012 4144
4640
3820 3813 3828
31852864
3253 3225
3684
46424445 4550
7261
6791
5717 5670
66176356
8024
7334
6633
5136
4082
3577
2500
3500
4500
5500
6500
7500
8500
The Netherlands
Denmark
Figure 1 Salience in news media in the two countries across time (absolute number of articles on immigration)
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 273
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
guided by information from the news media (Sniderman
and Theriault 2004) Although these studies all show
that tone has an impact they fall short in distinguishing
between the impact of negative versus positive media
messages which we are able to do in this study
How might the tone of the media affect opinions
Zaller (1992) describes this process as follows people
receive information from the news and decide whether
to accept this information When formulating an opin-
ion people sample from this accepted information This
receive-accept-sample model (RAS) shows how people
make use of the news Previous research has shown that
this is a dynamic process and that each individual collec-
tion of accepted information changes over time in line
with the developments in the news (Schwenk 1988) We
argue that the dominant tone in the news affects the gen-
eral sample of peoplersquos accepted information because re-
cent information is the easiest to access cognitively
(Higgins 1989) Hence the flow of immigration news
coverage when heavily one-sided (ie predominantly
negative or positive) can change public opinion at large
(Zaller 1992 1996) A person that is confronted with
both a positive and a negative message on the same issue
will however not be affected by either of the two mes-
sages as the two messages cancel each other out (De
Vreese and Boomgaarden 2006) However in a pre-
dominantly negative media environment the likelihood
that people are confronted with negative messages in-
creases therefore the information they sample from be-
comes more negative and immigration attitudes will
become more negative as well The same logic applies to
a positive bias but we expect this to reduce anti-immi-
gration sentiment
H3a Negative news reports increase anti-immigration
attitudes whereas (H3b) positive news reports reduce
anti-immigration attitudes
Conditionality of Country Characteristics
Most Similar Systems Design
The countries were selected using a most-similar-systems
design (MSSD) The use of an MSSD is lsquobased on the
premise that systems as identical as possible with regard
to as many constitutive features as possible represent the
optimal samples for comparative researchrsquo (Przeworski
and Teune 1970 p 32) The idea behind this compara-
tive method is that by selecting similar cases most of the
contextual characteristics that might be of influence
otherwise are held constant Hence only those charac-
teristics on which the selected cases differ may generate
an effect This considerably reduces the number of op-
erative variables which is ideal when one deals with a
lsquosmall Nrsquo which is often the case in country comparative
research (Lijphart 1971) The MSSD allows us to rule
out potential country-specific confounding factors
related to politics economics and media For this study
it is crucial to consider countries that are similar in terms
of political system (mature democracies multiparty sys-
tems) economic situation (welfare status in the OECD
GDP top 20) media systems and media news outlets [a
combination of public and private television broad-
casters and a democratic corporatist model (Hallin and
Mancini 2004)] Additionally the countries should be
compatible with regard to the ethnic religious and cul-
tural background of the immigrant population1 (SCP
2009 Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011) We decided to compare the Netherlands and
Denmark because these countries fulfil these
requirements
Despite the clear similarities there is one important
difference Though both countries have dealt with immi-
gration since the 1970s and early 1980s the immigrant
population grew faster and larger in the Netherlands
(Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich 2011) For
decades immigration has played a crucial role in Dutch
politics public debates and the news media Attention
increased briefly after the assassinations of right-wing
politician Pim Fortuyn (in 2002) and filmmaker Theo
van Gogh (in 2004) (Vliegenthart and Roggeband
2007) Immigration has been a politicized issue in the
Netherlands since the early 1990s (ie a multicultural
society) the issue became politicized in Denmark in the
late 1990s only (ie with the founding of the Danish
Peoplersquos party in 1995) Hence the immigration topic
has been prominent for a longer period of time in the
Dutch context than in the Danish context Ceteris pari-
bus we tentatively propose that these country differ-
ences have led to different effects of the media and
RWDs even in the 2000s In the section below we elab-
orate how
Divergent Country Effects
Neuman (1990) stated that the public is especially
attuned to some issues while others receive lsquono more
than a collective yawnrsquo (p 162) An explanation for the
difference in public attention paid to issues is provided
by the classical theory of public response function by
Downs (1972) which describes a five-stage issue re-
sponse function (issue-attention-cycle) The pre-problem
stage a problem exists but has not been given any public
attention (yet) the discovery stage public attention to
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 271
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the issue is catalysed after the issue has passed the atten-
tion threshold the plateau stage enthusiasm for the
issue wanes and public attention stabilizes the decline
stage an inattentive phase in which the public is frus-
trated by the notion that the problem has no simple so-
lution and the post-problem stage the issue is old and
uninteresting and receives little attention
Arguably the stage of an issue is crucial to the
amount of received attention (eg media politics and
public opinion) and the willingness of the public to pay
attention to the issue to gain information and to
(re)formulate an opinion (Behr and Iyengar 1985
Neuman 1990) We argue that this issue stage may
moderate the effects of RWDs and the media and that a
higher level of public attention for an issue tightens the
relationship between RWDs media and public opinion
which causes the effects to be bigger By doing so we
are among the first to bring together media effects con-
ditioned by issue attention cycles
The question then is at what stage the two countries
in this study are located Reyes (2010) argues that in
America immigration is one of the lsquotop five recycled
issuesrsquo the issue is always present but it regains its im-
portance around election campaigns We think the situ-
ation in the two European countries is not too different
The issue remained important in both countries over the
entire period but gained attention around certain im-
portant events Because we cover a time span of several
years it is likely that the issue has passed through sev-
eral stages of the issue-attention cycle repeatedly
To make a better estimate of the stage of the immi-
gration issue in each of the two countries we consult
our data on overall media and public attention (see first
part of the results section)2 Here we see that Denmark
shows two large peaks in media and public opinion
whereas the Netherlands shows limited fluctuations in
media and public attention Based on the immigration
history of both countries described in the previous
section (Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011 also see footnote 1) and the descriptive data
we cautiously propose that the Netherlands has been
in the plateau and decline stage more than it has
been in the discovery stage in the early to late 2000s
whereas Denmark has spent relatively more time in the
discovery stage over the period of observation
Therefore we expect the influence of media and RWDs
on the public to be stronger in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
H4 RWDs and the media have a larger influence on
anti-immigration sentiment in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
Data and Method
The data were collected between 2003 and 2010 in
Denmark and between 2003 and 2009 in the
Netherlands We selected this period due to its stability
with regard to immigration policies presence of immi-
gration parties (Bommes and Sciortino 2011 Broch-
mann et al 2012) and economic prosperity3 By doing
so these structural developments do not impact our re-
sults We draw on three types of longitudinal data real
world data which were collected from the Eurostat
website media data including the total number of art-
icles about immigration and a random selection of news-
paper articles about immigration that were manually
coded by a group of trained coders (native speakers)4
and survey data for which several waves of the Euro-
barometer were used (ie from wave 591 to wave
742)
To analyse these longitudinal data we use a multile-
vel model with individuals nested within biyearly
periods (16 in Denmark and 14 in the Netherlands)
Because the dependent variable is dichotomous a logis-
tic version of this modelling technique5 is applied The
intra-class correlations (ICC)6 (012 in the Netherlands
and 016 in Denmark) indicate that attitudes (Level 1)
are correlated within each 6-month period (Level 2)
This means that country-level characteristics are rele-
vant and that a multilevel approach is required
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable stems from the Eurobarometer
which required the respondent to select the problem
they find most important from a list of 12 political issues
ranging from international economic competition
crime and unemployment to immigration7 (see
Supplementary Table A1 for the descriptive statistics
for this variable in each country)8 As Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart (2009) argue lsquoThe most important prob-
lem (MIP) question provides an utilizable proxy measure
for anti-immigration attitudes By asking about the most
important problem the question prescribes a negative
evaluative component If people consider immigration
the prime problem the nation is facing it is reasonable
to interpret this immigration problem perception as a
measure of anti-immigration attitudesrsquo (p 522) The au-
thors elaborate on their statement by comparing the
MIP responses to the responses to more explicit anti-im-
migration sentiment measures We ran similar checks on
our data by comparing the results of the MIP question
to immigrant attitude questions that were asked in
one of the waves of the Eurobarometer Our results
confirmed the assumption by Boomgaarden and
272 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Vliegenthart and indicate that this MIP question meas-
ures attitudes towards the issue (Wlezien 2005)9
Media Variables
The current study uses coded newspaper articles to rep-
resent the news media environment To capture a wide
news spectrum newspapers with a wide range of polit-
ical views were selected De Telegraaf and De
Volkskrant in the Netherlands and Jyllands Posten and
Politiken in Denmark De Telegraaf is the only tabloid-
like newspaper in the Netherlands and one of the oldest
and largest Dutch dailies to date It is known for its rela-
tively right-wing perspective De Volkskrant is a large
central-leftist newspaper it is also one of the largest
newspapers in the Netherlands and has been in existence
since the early 1900s Jyllands Posten one of the largest
newspapers in Denmark became internationally infam-
ous for its portrait of Mohammed in 2005 It is a liberal
central-right broadsheet newspaper One of its main
competitors is Politiken the leading Danish newspaper
which was originally connected to the Danish Social
Liberal Party but declared its independence in the
1970s
The search terms10 used to collect the data from
these newspapers on immigration and closely related
topics were created in Dutch and translated into
Danish A sample of monthly articles per country11 was
randomly selected from the collected data and manually
coded by nine native speakers Media salience is defined
as the percentage of change compared with the previous
6-month period for each country the total number of
newspaper articles about immigration are used to create
this variable (see Figure 1 for absolute frequencies and
Supplementary Table A1 in Appendix 4 for descriptive
statistics)
To code tone we organized intensive coding sessions
Coders were instructed to read English language mater-
ial which enabled us to check the inter-coder reliability
for all of the coders at once To code tone coders read
the articles and answered the following question lsquoHow
would you say the main topic is discussedrsquo The re-
sponses were lsquoin a negative wayrsquo lsquoin a balanced wayrsquo
lsquoin a positive wayrsquo or lsquoin a neutral wayrsquo For instance if
an article talked about immigrants in a derogatory man-
ner saying that their level of integration is too low this
would clearly be negative from an immigrantrsquos point of
view However if an article discussed the issue for in-
stance in terms of stimulating employment for immi-
grants the tone would be positive from this perspective
Eventually all the coders were asked to code English
newspaper articles and once the inter-coder reliability
of this English material was up to standard the coders
were given the coding material in their native language
(ie Dutch and Danish) The percent agreement was 63
per cent among the five Dutch coders and 65 per cent
among the four Danish coders These reliability scores
are reasonable but not perfect therefore the results of
the tone analysis are interpreted with caution
As we are interested in the difference between the ef-
fects of positive and negative news we defined two tone
variables These were created by calculating the
28943175
3779 3933 38184012 4144
4640
3820 3813 3828
31852864
3253 3225
3684
46424445 4550
7261
6791
5717 5670
66176356
8024
7334
6633
5136
4082
3577
2500
3500
4500
5500
6500
7500
8500
The Netherlands
Denmark
Figure 1 Salience in news media in the two countries across time (absolute number of articles on immigration)
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 273
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
the issue is catalysed after the issue has passed the atten-
tion threshold the plateau stage enthusiasm for the
issue wanes and public attention stabilizes the decline
stage an inattentive phase in which the public is frus-
trated by the notion that the problem has no simple so-
lution and the post-problem stage the issue is old and
uninteresting and receives little attention
Arguably the stage of an issue is crucial to the
amount of received attention (eg media politics and
public opinion) and the willingness of the public to pay
attention to the issue to gain information and to
(re)formulate an opinion (Behr and Iyengar 1985
Neuman 1990) We argue that this issue stage may
moderate the effects of RWDs and the media and that a
higher level of public attention for an issue tightens the
relationship between RWDs media and public opinion
which causes the effects to be bigger By doing so we
are among the first to bring together media effects con-
ditioned by issue attention cycles
The question then is at what stage the two countries
in this study are located Reyes (2010) argues that in
America immigration is one of the lsquotop five recycled
issuesrsquo the issue is always present but it regains its im-
portance around election campaigns We think the situ-
ation in the two European countries is not too different
The issue remained important in both countries over the
entire period but gained attention around certain im-
portant events Because we cover a time span of several
years it is likely that the issue has passed through sev-
eral stages of the issue-attention cycle repeatedly
To make a better estimate of the stage of the immi-
gration issue in each of the two countries we consult
our data on overall media and public attention (see first
part of the results section)2 Here we see that Denmark
shows two large peaks in media and public opinion
whereas the Netherlands shows limited fluctuations in
media and public attention Based on the immigration
history of both countries described in the previous
section (Jensen et al 2010 Berkhout and Sudulich
2011 also see footnote 1) and the descriptive data
we cautiously propose that the Netherlands has been
in the plateau and decline stage more than it has
been in the discovery stage in the early to late 2000s
whereas Denmark has spent relatively more time in the
discovery stage over the period of observation
Therefore we expect the influence of media and RWDs
on the public to be stronger in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
H4 RWDs and the media have a larger influence on
anti-immigration sentiment in Denmark than in the
Netherlands
Data and Method
The data were collected between 2003 and 2010 in
Denmark and between 2003 and 2009 in the
Netherlands We selected this period due to its stability
with regard to immigration policies presence of immi-
gration parties (Bommes and Sciortino 2011 Broch-
mann et al 2012) and economic prosperity3 By doing
so these structural developments do not impact our re-
sults We draw on three types of longitudinal data real
world data which were collected from the Eurostat
website media data including the total number of art-
icles about immigration and a random selection of news-
paper articles about immigration that were manually
coded by a group of trained coders (native speakers)4
and survey data for which several waves of the Euro-
barometer were used (ie from wave 591 to wave
742)
To analyse these longitudinal data we use a multile-
vel model with individuals nested within biyearly
periods (16 in Denmark and 14 in the Netherlands)
Because the dependent variable is dichotomous a logis-
tic version of this modelling technique5 is applied The
intra-class correlations (ICC)6 (012 in the Netherlands
and 016 in Denmark) indicate that attitudes (Level 1)
are correlated within each 6-month period (Level 2)
This means that country-level characteristics are rele-
vant and that a multilevel approach is required
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable stems from the Eurobarometer
which required the respondent to select the problem
they find most important from a list of 12 political issues
ranging from international economic competition
crime and unemployment to immigration7 (see
Supplementary Table A1 for the descriptive statistics
for this variable in each country)8 As Boomgaarden and
Vliegenthart (2009) argue lsquoThe most important prob-
lem (MIP) question provides an utilizable proxy measure
for anti-immigration attitudes By asking about the most
important problem the question prescribes a negative
evaluative component If people consider immigration
the prime problem the nation is facing it is reasonable
to interpret this immigration problem perception as a
measure of anti-immigration attitudesrsquo (p 522) The au-
thors elaborate on their statement by comparing the
MIP responses to the responses to more explicit anti-im-
migration sentiment measures We ran similar checks on
our data by comparing the results of the MIP question
to immigrant attitude questions that were asked in
one of the waves of the Eurobarometer Our results
confirmed the assumption by Boomgaarden and
272 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Vliegenthart and indicate that this MIP question meas-
ures attitudes towards the issue (Wlezien 2005)9
Media Variables
The current study uses coded newspaper articles to rep-
resent the news media environment To capture a wide
news spectrum newspapers with a wide range of polit-
ical views were selected De Telegraaf and De
Volkskrant in the Netherlands and Jyllands Posten and
Politiken in Denmark De Telegraaf is the only tabloid-
like newspaper in the Netherlands and one of the oldest
and largest Dutch dailies to date It is known for its rela-
tively right-wing perspective De Volkskrant is a large
central-leftist newspaper it is also one of the largest
newspapers in the Netherlands and has been in existence
since the early 1900s Jyllands Posten one of the largest
newspapers in Denmark became internationally infam-
ous for its portrait of Mohammed in 2005 It is a liberal
central-right broadsheet newspaper One of its main
competitors is Politiken the leading Danish newspaper
which was originally connected to the Danish Social
Liberal Party but declared its independence in the
1970s
The search terms10 used to collect the data from
these newspapers on immigration and closely related
topics were created in Dutch and translated into
Danish A sample of monthly articles per country11 was
randomly selected from the collected data and manually
coded by nine native speakers Media salience is defined
as the percentage of change compared with the previous
6-month period for each country the total number of
newspaper articles about immigration are used to create
this variable (see Figure 1 for absolute frequencies and
Supplementary Table A1 in Appendix 4 for descriptive
statistics)
To code tone we organized intensive coding sessions
Coders were instructed to read English language mater-
ial which enabled us to check the inter-coder reliability
for all of the coders at once To code tone coders read
the articles and answered the following question lsquoHow
would you say the main topic is discussedrsquo The re-
sponses were lsquoin a negative wayrsquo lsquoin a balanced wayrsquo
lsquoin a positive wayrsquo or lsquoin a neutral wayrsquo For instance if
an article talked about immigrants in a derogatory man-
ner saying that their level of integration is too low this
would clearly be negative from an immigrantrsquos point of
view However if an article discussed the issue for in-
stance in terms of stimulating employment for immi-
grants the tone would be positive from this perspective
Eventually all the coders were asked to code English
newspaper articles and once the inter-coder reliability
of this English material was up to standard the coders
were given the coding material in their native language
(ie Dutch and Danish) The percent agreement was 63
per cent among the five Dutch coders and 65 per cent
among the four Danish coders These reliability scores
are reasonable but not perfect therefore the results of
the tone analysis are interpreted with caution
As we are interested in the difference between the ef-
fects of positive and negative news we defined two tone
variables These were created by calculating the
28943175
3779 3933 38184012 4144
4640
3820 3813 3828
31852864
3253 3225
3684
46424445 4550
7261
6791
5717 5670
66176356
8024
7334
6633
5136
4082
3577
2500
3500
4500
5500
6500
7500
8500
The Netherlands
Denmark
Figure 1 Salience in news media in the two countries across time (absolute number of articles on immigration)
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 273
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
Vliegenthart and indicate that this MIP question meas-
ures attitudes towards the issue (Wlezien 2005)9
Media Variables
The current study uses coded newspaper articles to rep-
resent the news media environment To capture a wide
news spectrum newspapers with a wide range of polit-
ical views were selected De Telegraaf and De
Volkskrant in the Netherlands and Jyllands Posten and
Politiken in Denmark De Telegraaf is the only tabloid-
like newspaper in the Netherlands and one of the oldest
and largest Dutch dailies to date It is known for its rela-
tively right-wing perspective De Volkskrant is a large
central-leftist newspaper it is also one of the largest
newspapers in the Netherlands and has been in existence
since the early 1900s Jyllands Posten one of the largest
newspapers in Denmark became internationally infam-
ous for its portrait of Mohammed in 2005 It is a liberal
central-right broadsheet newspaper One of its main
competitors is Politiken the leading Danish newspaper
which was originally connected to the Danish Social
Liberal Party but declared its independence in the
1970s
The search terms10 used to collect the data from
these newspapers on immigration and closely related
topics were created in Dutch and translated into
Danish A sample of monthly articles per country11 was
randomly selected from the collected data and manually
coded by nine native speakers Media salience is defined
as the percentage of change compared with the previous
6-month period for each country the total number of
newspaper articles about immigration are used to create
this variable (see Figure 1 for absolute frequencies and
Supplementary Table A1 in Appendix 4 for descriptive
statistics)
To code tone we organized intensive coding sessions
Coders were instructed to read English language mater-
ial which enabled us to check the inter-coder reliability
for all of the coders at once To code tone coders read
the articles and answered the following question lsquoHow
would you say the main topic is discussedrsquo The re-
sponses were lsquoin a negative wayrsquo lsquoin a balanced wayrsquo
lsquoin a positive wayrsquo or lsquoin a neutral wayrsquo For instance if
an article talked about immigrants in a derogatory man-
ner saying that their level of integration is too low this
would clearly be negative from an immigrantrsquos point of
view However if an article discussed the issue for in-
stance in terms of stimulating employment for immi-
grants the tone would be positive from this perspective
Eventually all the coders were asked to code English
newspaper articles and once the inter-coder reliability
of this English material was up to standard the coders
were given the coding material in their native language
(ie Dutch and Danish) The percent agreement was 63
per cent among the five Dutch coders and 65 per cent
among the four Danish coders These reliability scores
are reasonable but not perfect therefore the results of
the tone analysis are interpreted with caution
As we are interested in the difference between the ef-
fects of positive and negative news we defined two tone
variables These were created by calculating the
28943175
3779 3933 38184012 4144
4640
3820 3813 3828
31852864
3253 3225
3684
46424445 4550
7261
6791
5717 5670
66176356
8024
7334
6633
5136
4082
3577
2500
3500
4500
5500
6500
7500
8500
The Netherlands
Denmark
Figure 1 Salience in news media in the two countries across time (absolute number of articles on immigration)
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 273
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
percentage of negative and positive messages out of
the total number of coded news messages during the
6-month period
Real-World Developments
From Eurostat12 we obtained the immigrant population
size and inflow figures the first includes the number of
non-Western immigrants residing in each country per
year and the second captures the long-term immigrants
who move into the country each year13 From these
data two variables were created by estimating the num-
ber of non-Western immigrants14 relative to the entire
population of the country (ie in line with Semyonov
et al 2006 and Schluter and Davidov 2013 and non-
Western countries are defined as those in Africa Asia
Eastern Europe or Latin America) and the percent
change compared with the previous year The two vari-
ables enable us to compare the results with previous
studies that have used similar measures but rarely to-
gether and to find out how their change over time af-
fects anti-immigration sentiment
Meanwhile in each model we control for potentially
influential key events that were not only prominent na-
tionally but also spilled over into international broad-
casting and public debate These key events were
identified from the extant literature (Sides and Citrin
2007 Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2007) and veri-
fied in interviews with country experts These include
the London bombing (July 2005) and the Madrid bomb-
ing (March 2004) the Van Gogh homicide in the
Netherlands (November 2004) and the Mohammed
cartoon in Denmark (September 2005) However be-
cause the country-specific events will have had a bigger
impact in the given country than in others key events
were considered a country-specific dichotomous variable
(key events 0frac14 no event 1frac14 event)
Control Variables
In the models we controlled for a variety of individual
characteristics gender because women are generally
more tolerant than men (Kuran and McCaffery 2008)
age because younger people are generally more tolerant
than the elderly (Firebaugh and Davis 1988 Quillian
1995) and education15 because educated people are
generally more accepting (Hainmueller and Hiscox
2007) Hainmueller and Hiscox argue that education
not labour market competition affects xenophobic feel-
ings Our exploratory analyses show similar results
therefore we only include education16 Finally left-right
identification (1frac14 left-wing to 10frac14 right-wing) is
included because the immigration issue is crudely
divided along this dimension as people who are more
right-wing are generally more negative about immigra-
tion (Money 1999)
Results
Country Differences
The developments with regard to immigration in the
two countries are briefly described on the basis of our
data Subsequently we continue with the results of the
analyses
Figure 1 shows the absolute number of articles about
immigration in both countries Note that the total num-
ber of articles in each newspaper may differ Hence we
can only look at the differences in fluctuations across
time In Denmark media salience reaches a high peak
but it also fluctuates substantially The presence of the
immigration issue in the Netherlands shows no large
peaks or dips Figure 2 shows the percentages of nega-
tive and positive immigration news reports Negative re-
ports trump positive reports in the Netherlands but the
tone is more moderate The percentage of negative news
reports remains well under 50 per cent until the second
half of 2009 In the first half of 2009 there is an obvious
peak in positive news coverage
Negative news dominates the Danish media land-
scape but there are many fluctuations there is a positive
news peak in 2007 (491 per cent) and a negative
peak in 2008 (50 per cent) The former peak might
have been a counter-reaction to the period of negative
news following the Mohammed cartoon in 2005 The
latter occurred immediately after the Danish Peoplersquos
Party had won the elections Figure 3 presents the per-
centage of people indicating that immigration is the MIP
in their country The Netherlands shows a peak in the
first half of 2004 (155 per cent) and another peak in
the first half of 2008 (169 per cent) Denmark showed
the highest peak in the second half of 2005 (303 per
cent) after 2006 immigration as the MIP steadily
declined from 227 per cent in 2007 to 65 per cent in
2010
It is likely that media characteristics have an effect
above and beyond RWDs on anti-immigration sentiment
because media do not necessarily follow RWDs
Figure 4 shows that this assumption is largely correct In
both countries there is no strong positive correlation be-
tween immigrant inflows and media attention towards
the issue
In the Netherlands however there is a negative cor-
relation between RWDs and media salience17 A decline
in one variable coincides with an increase in the other
274 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
which may cause suppression effects in the overall
model Because the correlation is not very high we do
not foresee that this negative correlation will have a
large impact but it is something that needs to be
investigated
Table 1 shows the results (log odds) of the logistic
multilevel analyses in each country The limited number
of periods per country calls for parsimonious modelling
Therefore a stepwise approach is applied (see super-
script a b and c in Table 1)18
Figure 2 Tone in news media in the two countries across time22 in percentage of articles out of the total number of articles about
immigration in a 6-month period)
Figure 3 Percentage of people that indicates immigration as the MIP in their country 2003ndash2010
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 275
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
The first hypothesis states that increased immigration
leads to more negative immigration attitudes This hy-
pothesis was tested on the immigrant residents (see
Models 11 and 21) and the immigration inflow vari-
able (see the results in Models 12 and 22) The results
using the first variable were insignificant in both coun-
tries ie not supporting the hypothesis With regard to
the second immigration variable the results show that
the odds of developing anti-immigration attitudes in-
crease significantly with increased immigration inflows
in the Netherlands (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 000) Thus when
the immigrant inflow increases 1 per cent compared
with the previous period the odds of considering immi-
gration a problem increase 202 per cent The effect in
Model 23 in Denmark shows similar but insignificant
results (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14027) This means that there is
limited support for the first hypothesis
Second we expected the increased media visibility of
immigration to significantly increase anti-immigration
attitudes (H2) This media effect is significant in
Denmark (see Model 23 logitfrac14 0011 Pfrac14 002) when
we do not control for immigration inflows However if
we add this variable the overall effect in Denmark be-
comes insignificant (logitfrac14 001 Pfrac14007) which
means Hypothesis 2 is not confirmed in Denmark
In the Netherlands the effect in Model 13 shows no
support for the hypothesis however when controlling
for immigrant inflows the effect of media salience
becomes significant (logitfrac14022 Pfrac14000)19 Thus be-
cause immigrant inflows decrease at the same time that
media salience increases (negative correlation) the effect
of media salience is suppressed by immigrant inflows
Media salience does increase anti-immigration attitudes
in the Netherlands but this effect is invisible because im-
migration inflows reduce anti-immigrant attitudes at the
same time Adding immigrant inflows to the model with
media salience significantly improves the model fit20
These findings lend support for the media salience hy-
pothesis (H2) but only in the Netherlands
Furthermore we expected negative reports on immi-
gration to increase anti-immigration attitudes (H3a) and
positive news to decrease them (H3b) The effect of
negative news in the Netherlands is insignificant and
only borders on significance when immigrant inflows
are controlled for (logitfrac140013 Pfrac14 0054) This find-
ing however should not be given too much weight
given the effect size and the reliability scores Positive
news (see Models 14 and 24 in Table 1) however
clearly reduces anti-immigration attitudes in the
Netherlands (logitfrac14004 Pfrac14000) but not in
Denmark (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 013) Thus H3a is not sup-
ported by the results and H3b is supported by the
results in the Netherlands The fact that negative news
has no effect counters Sorokarsquos (2006) findings that pre-
dominantly negative media coverage negatively affects
attitudes a point we will return to in the discussion
The model fits are presented in the bottom row We
can see here that the models significantly improve with
the additional control variable (key events) but that
each of the variables of interest does not lead to a signifi-
cantly improved model fit In the Netherlands we do see
that immigrant inflows and positive news lead to a sub-
stantial reduction of the unexplained second-level vari-
ance (u0j) but the addition of negative news does not
improve the model fit (see Models 16 and 26)
Our findings show that RWDs and media have dif-
ferent impacts depending on the country of observation
Based on the issue-attention cycle we expected to find
the biggest influences in Denmark (H4) but the opposite
effect emerged The Danish are affected less by these
Figure 4 Correlation between immigration inflows and media salience
276 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
Tab
le1L
og
isti
cm
ult
ile
ve
lm
od
els
re
alw
orl
dfa
cto
rsa
nd
me
dia
infl
ue
nce
so
na
nti
-im
mig
rati
on
att
itu
de
s
The
Net
her
lands
Base
line
Model
1M
odel
11
Model
12
Model
13
Model
14
Model
15
Model
16
Inte
rcep
t
23
3(0
33)
25
2(0
21)
38
1(3
44)
23
3(0
20)
25
2(0
21)
13
6(0
39)
29
7(0
49)
16
8(0
74)
Key
even
ts
01
8(0
28)
01
6(0
28)
00
1(0
21)
02
0(0
27)
05
0(0
22)
02
0(0
27)
05
2(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
01
2(0
33)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
2(0
00)
Med
iasa
lien
ceb
00
1(0
01)
Posi
tive
new
sa
00
4(0
01)
00
4(0
01)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
1(0
01)
00
1(0
01)
u0j
04
404
14
102
94
02
94
002
9
e 0j
07
700
00
00
00
00
00
000
0
2lo
glikel
ihood
91
886
890
597
90
598
90
509
90
591
90
511
90
590
90
508
Den
mark
Base
line
Model
2M
odel
21
Model
22
Model
23
Model
24
Model
25
Model
26
Inte
rcep
t
16
4(0
25)
24
1(0
47)
11
5(1
16)
24
1(0
47)
24
2(0
47)
29
2(0
71)
24
3(0
74)
32
2(1
03)
Key
even
ts06
3(0
37)
04
7(0
38)
06
4(0
36)
07
1(0
34)
07
5(0
38)
06
2(0
38)
07
2(0
38)
Imm
igra
nt
popula
tion
02
4(0
22)
Imm
igra
nt
inflow
sa00
1(0
01)
Med
iasa
lien
cea
00
11
(00
06)
Posi
tive
new
s00
1(0
02)
00
2(0
02)
Neg
ati
ve
new
s00
0(0
01)
00
1(0
02)
u0j
06
105
405
205
404
805
205
405
2
e 0j
08
003
503
603
503
803
803
503
9
2lo
glikel
ihood
142
992
139
519
139
507
139
515
139
481
139
507
139
450
139
505
Note
sE
ach
model
show
sth
elo
godds
firs
tand
the
stan
dar
der
ror
bet
wee
npare
nth
eses
ea
chm
odel
als
oin
cludes
age
educa
tiongen
der
and
left
right
posi
tionw
hic
hsh
ow
edth
eex
pec
ted
resu
lts
signifi
cant
one-
tail
edre
sult
s
A
lphalt
01
0alp
halt
00
5alp
halt
00
1T
he
Net
her
lands
n1132
36n
214D
enm
ark
n
1151
23n
216
aT
his
resu
ltre
main
ssi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
med
iasa
lien
ceand
tone
vari
able
sbT
his
resu
ltbec
om
essi
gnifi
cant
(Plt
00
5)
wit
hth
ein
clusi
on
of
imm
igra
nt
inflow
s
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 277
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
factors than the Dutch although some of the effects in
the Netherlands are suppressed by RWDs
To determine whether the effects differ significantly
between the Netherlands and Denmark interaction
models were created in a pooled logistic regression
model with country dummies21 The results in Table 2
show that there are significant differences in the impact
of RWDs Although the effects of immigrant population
are insignificant in both countries a significant differ-
ence was found in Model 1 because of the negative effect
in Denmark and the positive effect in the Netherlands
(logitfrac14089 Pfrac14 000) Immigrant inflows (see Model
2) are significant in the Netherlands and differ signifi-
cantly from the effects in Denmark (logitfrac14002
Pfrac14000) There is also a significant difference in the
effect of media salience (logitfrac14001 Pfrac14 000)
which indicates that the effect of media salience is
slightly but significantly smaller in Denmark than in the
Netherlands The effect of positive news in the
Netherlands differs slightly but significantly from the
effect in Denmark (logitfrac14 002 Pfrac14 0009) but we found
no systematic difference with respect to negative news
(logitfrac14 000 Pfrac14041) Overall the results do not com-
ply with the fourth hypothesis the results are significantly
more pronounced in the Netherlands than in Denmark
Discussion
Scholars have frequently demonstrated the influence of
context on peoplersquos attitudes towards immigrants
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006
Boomgaaden and Vliegenthart 2009 Schluter and
Davidov 2013) The aim was to replicate and refine
some of these findings as well as to investigate the influ-
ence of media salience and tone This study provides
new insights regarding the generalizability of the effects
the effects of change rather than the mere presence of an
immigrant population and the effects of the media over
time using a comparative perspective The main goal of
this study was to tackle the following research question
To what extent do the size of the immigrant population
the media visibility and the tone of news reports about
immigration affect immigration attitudes Below each
element of this question is discussed
Based on realistic group conflict theory (LeVine and
Campbell 1972 Austin and Worchel 1979) and social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) we hypothe-
sized that immigration causes feelings of competition
and threat and increases anti-immigration attitudes
(Scheepers et al 2002 Semyonov et al 2006) The
findings support this assumption for the Netherlands
with regard to the relative immigrant inflows This indi-
cates that incoming immigrants have a bigger impact
than the relative number of residential immigrants in
this country In Denmark no support for this hypothesis
was found in contrast to the findings of Schluter and
Davidov (2013) but in line with the study by Manevska
and Achterberg (2013) who found a very limited influ-
ence of actual immigration on immigration attitudes
One reason for this seeming paradox might be found on
Table 2 Pooled logistic regression models of RWDs and media on anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark and the
Netherlands
Predictors Baseline Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Intercept 163 (002) 1155 (126) 338 (000) 310 (013) 318 (019) 085 (019)
Country(nlfrac14 ref) 972 (152) 084 (006) 070 (004) 116 (021) 063 (021)
Immigrant population (1) 086 (013)
Immigrant inflows (2) 0006 (000)
Media salience (3) 0001 (000)
Positive news (4) 001 (0005)
Negative news (5) 000 (000)
Country 1 089 (017)
Country 2 0019 (000)
Country 3 001 (000)
Country 4 0015 (0007)
Country 5 000 (001)
Pseudo R2 000 005 005 005 005 005
2 loglikelihood 231773 219832 219725 220294 220387 220433
Notes Each model shows the log odds first and the standard error between parentheses each model also includes period dummies age education gender and left
right position and key events
Alphalt010 alphalt005 alphalt001
The Netherlands n1 13236 Denmark n1 15123
278 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
the contextual level of analysis Immigrants mostly settle
in bigger cities and urban areas Natives who live in
these areas will notice change and be affected more than
those in rural areas However in big cities people are
also more likely to come into contact with people from
different ethnic backgrounds which can reduce ethnic
prejudice according to Allportrsquos (1954) contact theory
We expected media salience to increase anti-immi-
gration sentiment this indeed was the case in the
Netherlands We found that immigrant inflows suppress
the effect of media salience Both variables produced the
same result however because a decrease in media sali-
ence often coincided with an increase in immigrant in-
flows the effect of media salience was not visible until
immigrant inflows were added to the model This means
that the presence of immigration in the media in the
Netherlands had an impact
Hence this supports the idea that a greater assort-
ment of received messages with a particular tone
through the acceptance of these toned messages leads to
a change in the sample that affects peoplersquos attitudes
(RAS model Zaller 1992) Tone had an effect on the
public discourse in the Netherlands such that a positive
tone in news reports reduced anti-immigration attitudes
(also see Boomgaarden 2007) Surprisingly the effect of
negative news was not significant Thismdashand the fact
that negative news did not mediate the effect of media
saliencemdashcounters the lsquoany news is bad newsrsquo notion
which is frequently used to explain the effect of news sa-
lience on anti-immigration attitudes when it is not pos-
sible to assess the tone of news It also counters Sorokarsquos
asymmetrical influences thesis that people are generally
more responsive to negative information than to positive
information This is possibly due to the fact that immi-
gration is predominantly discussed in negative terms
hence people have gotten so used to negative messages
that any divergence is more noticeable and has a bigger
impact
The limited influence of media variables in Denmark
does not mean that there is no effect of media at all One
might find more fluctuations at the individual level that
do not appear when averaged at the country level
(Zaller 1996) To further explore this an experimental
design panel study or another method that relies on in-
dividual level media exposure measures would be more
appropriate
So why did we find differences between the two
countries First of all our findings are not in line with
Downrsquos issue-attention cycle Whether this is due to the
selection of specific cases the inaccuracy of the theory
or inaccurate categorization on our part is not clear
However we do know that the Netherlands has a more
rapidly growing immigrant population and a longer pol-
itical immigration history Thus Dutch citizens have
had more of an opportunity to become familiar with the
issue through politics media and personal experiences
Arguably the relatively steady presence of this issue in
the news has paved the way for news content to have an
effect (ie tone) When the public pays no attention to
an issue or related developments contextual characteris-
tics cannot have an effect because there is no critical
mass that pays attention to the issue (Neuman 1990)
There appears to be a critical mass in the Netherlands
that is influenced by the tone in the news In Denmark
however although the media give plenty of attention to
the issue there are no signs in our study of a critical mass
being affected by news content The fluctuations in media
salience over time were large these patterns appeared to
have attracted peoplersquos attention and influenced their atti-
tudes rather than the tone of the messages Although the
correlation between immigration inflows and media sali-
ence was not very large it was large enough to mediate
most of the effect of media salience
There are some limitations to this study to which we
would like to pay specific attention First one limitation
of this study that is evident from the sometimes limited
predictive power of the presented models is that due to
insufficient data some important explanatory variables
could not be included For example perceived ethnic
threat as well as cultural values or intergroup friend-
ships are not included as mediators or moderators
though they have been found to play a crucial role with
regard to immigration attitudes and should be taken
into consideration when possible (Hooghe et al 2013
Manevska and Achterberg 2013)
Second one downside to the otherwise innovative
longitudinal design is the limited availability of longitu-
dinal dependent variables The Eurobarometer provided
the only immigration attitude question that recurred fre-
quently over the period of interest The lsquomost-important
problemrsquo question does not differentiate between ethnic
groups It is a tricky question to use because the answer
depends on the prominence of other issues on the
agenda However this makes the tests of the hypotheses
more stringent because it reduces the chances of
finding effects of RWDs Nevertheless it is not
ideal Furthermore though the variable was proven to
be a good proxy of immigration attitude it still is a
proxy Because of the bipolar nature of the variablemdash
measuring both importance as well as attitudesmdashit is
necessary to be cautious when drawing conclusions
while using this variable Mainly because a part of the
people who indicate that immigration is their countryrsquos
biggest problem sympathizes with immigrant minorities
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 279
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
However this also means that the results of this study
are likely to be an underestimation of the real effect
We were able to include two quality newspapers in
Denmark while we also included a tabloid-like news-
paper in the Netherlands Because tabloids are on aver-
age slightly more negative about immigration there was
a chance of overestimating the effects of positive news in
Denmark as we had not included such a newspaper
here In this study however such overestimation is un-
likely as there was no effect of positive news in
Denmark whatsoever Finally some authors argue that
the causal mechanism is reversed and media are influ-
enced by public opinion So far no attention was given
to this idea but it is possible that media pick up on pub-
lic tendencies while the media influence the public cre-
ating a spiral mechanism This is an important
perspective that should be given consideration in future
research
It would be inappropriate to draw firm conclusions
from just two cases hence these conclusions are largely
tentative and intended as a basis for future research
Even so this study shows interesting effects In
Denmark media salience was the only contextual effect
that approached significance whereas immigrant in-
flows and most media characteristics had an influence in
the Netherlands The fact that we found such influences
in the Netherlands is intriguing Here the immigration
topic is established therefore we expected people to
have largely stable opinions (see Saltier and Woelfel
1975) or be bored with the issue (Downs 1972) but our
findings show evidence to the contrary From these re-
sults we can tentatively deduce that it takes time before
people turn into a critical mass get informed and before
their attitudes regarding immigration can be affected by
contextual changes in the media and in the real world
Notes1 The Netherlands Between 1972 and 2010 non-
Western immigration grew from 200000 to 19
million (SCP 2012) with the largest proportion
from Turkey Morocco and Suriname (Berkhout
and Sudulich 2011) Denmark a small group of
guest workers from Turkey Pakistan and
Yugoslavia entered in the 1960s (Jensen et al
2010) In the 1980s and 1990s refugees arrived
mostly from Sri Lanka the Middle East Bosnia
Afghanistan Somalia and Iraq In 2010 the immi-
grant population was 98 per cent
2 These are the figures on which RWD and media
visibility variables are based they are merely used
for indicative purposes here
3 The effect of economy was addressed by including
unemployment figures and GDP in the models
Neither had a significant effect on the dependent
variable
4 The newspaper data were collected through online
databases Lexis Nexis (the Netherlands) and
Infomedia (Denmark)
5 For this we used the xtmelogit command in Stata
12
6 The ICC for logistic models is defined as qfrac14r2u
(r2uthorn r2e) where r2efrac14p23 and r2u is the vari-
ance of the random intercept of an unconditional
logistic multilevel model logit(pij)frac14 c00thornu0j
where u0j N(0 r2u) (Guo and Zhao 2000)
7 Consult the Eurobarometer website for the full
range of topics The analysis only includes those
who were born and whose parents were born in
the Netherlands or Denmark
8 Though not an ideal measure it is the only com-
patible measure available over this time span
9 We ran the tests with four 4-point scale immigra-
tion attitude questions and the results were as fol-
lows for the question lsquoimmigrants are necessary
for the economyrsquo people who said immigration
was the biggest problem were significantly more
negative than those who did not (respectively
Mfrac14 26 Mfrac1424 Pfrac14 000) For the question lsquoim-
migrants will solve the age problemrsquo the results are
similar (Mfrac1428 Mfrac1426 Pfrac14000) The question
lsquoimmigrant contribute to societyrsquo was also an-
swered more positively by those who did not see
immigration as the biggest problem (Mfrac14 31
Mfrac14 26 Pfrac14000) while they tended to disagree
more with the statement lsquoimmigrants form a
threatrsquo (Mfrac14 22 Mfrac14 27 Pfrac14 000)
10 The translated search string reads (discrim or
(hate w5 onset) or (education or (course or les-
son) w10 (migrant or immi or alloch or asy-
lum or foreign)) or (class w1 DutchDanish) or
language course or language education or family
reunification or sham marriage or marry off or
immig or alloch or stranger or migran or mus-
lim or islam Or asylum or illegal or deported or
resident permit or multicult or (mass w1 regula-
ris) or regularis or import bride or (bride w5
foreign country) or (income requirement w20
marriag) or pluriform or asylum seeker or refu-
gee or (general pardon) or head scarve)
11 A total of 459 articles (of 55374) in the
Netherlands and 835 (of 86835) in Denmark
were coded ranging from two to seven per
month
280 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
12 See the Eurostat website for migr_pop3ctb and
migr_pop5ctz
13 These variables could not be measured in half
yearly figures which means that every year is
added twice To avoid Type I error marginally
significant results are interpreted with care
14 We also looked at Western immigrants and found
no effect
15 Measured on a 1ndash10 scale (1frac14 up to age 14 years
2frac14 up to 15 years and so on until 9frac14up to 22
years and 10frac14 still studying beyond age 22 years)
16 It is plausible that media effects and RWDs are
contingent upon individual characteristics We ran
each model including the interaction terms with
that of contextual and individual variables but
found no significant results
17 Further correlations between RWDs and media vari-
ables are presented in Supplementary Table A2
18 Each model controls for age education left-right
affiliation and gender Because our interest is
mostly in the influence of contextual characteris-
tics these are not presented but the results are in
line with previous studies Older people men less
educated and right-wing people are more nega-
tive Furthermore key events significantly increase
anti-immigration attitudes in Denmark
19 The model produced the following results inter-
cept -280 sefrac14019 immigrant inflows
logitfrac14 003 sefrac140005 u0jfrac14020 e0jfrac14 000 -2-
loglikelihoodfrac14904319
20 Likelihood ratio of 1647 dffrac14 1 Probgt v2frac14 000
21 This was done through 2010 to compare the same
periods in both countries
22 As Figure 2 shows media data for the Netherlands
was available up to 2010 The analyses in the
Netherlands therefore do not reach beyond that
point in time
Funding
This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation
Scientific Research (NWO) Conflict and Security program
[432-08-130]
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at ESR online
References
Allport G W (1954) The Nature of Prejudice Reading MA
Addison Wesley
Austin W G and Worchel S 1979 The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations Montery CA BrooksCole
Behr R and Iyengar S (1985) Television news real-world
cues and changes in the public agenda Public Opinion
Quarterly 49 38ndash57
Berkhout J and Sudulich M L (2011) Demographics of immi-
gration the Netherlands SOM Working Paper No 2011-07
available fromltSSRN httpssrncomabstractfrac141990213gt
Blumer H (1958) Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review 1 3ndash7
Bommes M and Sciortino G (Eds) (2011) Foggy Social
Structures Irregular Migration European Labour Markets
and the Welfare State IMISCOE Research Amsterdam
University Press
Boomgaarden H G (2007) Framing the Others News and
Ethnic Prejudice Manuscript University of Amsterdam
(dissertation)
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2007) Explaining
the rise of anti-immigrant parties the role of news content
in the Netherlands 1990ndash2002 Electoral Studies 26
404ndash417
Boomgaarden H G and Vliegenthart R (2009) How news
content influences anti immigration attitudes Germany 1993-
2005 European Journal of Political Research 48 516ndash542
Boswell C (2005) A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis
and Research Programme of the Global Commission on
International Migration Migration Research Group
Hamburg Institute of International Economics
Brochmann G Borevi K Hagelund A Jonsson H V and
Petersen K (2012) Immigration Policy and the Scandinavian
Welfare State 1945-2010 Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan
Ceobanu A M and Escandell X (2010) Comparative analyses
of public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration using
multinational survey data a review of theories and research
Annual Review of Sociology 36 309ndash328
De Vreese C H and Boomgaarden H G (2006) Media mes-
sage flows and interpersonal communication the conditional
nature of effects on public opinion Communication Research
33 1ndash19
Dixon T L and Azocar C L (2007) Priming crime and acti-
vating blackness understanding the psychological impact of
the overrepresentation of blacks as lawbreakers on television
news Journal of Communication 57 229ndash253
Domke D (2001) Racial cues and political ideology
Communication Research 28 772ndash801
Downs A (1972) Up and down with ecology ndash The lsquoissue-
attention cyclersquo Public Interest 28 28ndash50
Esser F and Brosius HB (1996) Television as Arsonist The
spread of right-wing violence in Germany European Journal
of Communication 11 235ndash260
Firebaugh G and Davis K E (1988) Trends in antiblack
prejudice 1972-1984 region and cohort effects American
Journal of Sociology 94 251ndash272
Gilliam F D and Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects the influ-
ence of local television news on the viewing public American
Journal of Political Science 44 560ndash573
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 281
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
Goidel R K and Langley R E (1995) Media coverage of the
economy and aggregate economic evaluations uncovering evi-
dence of indirect media effects Political Research Quarterly
48 313ndash328
Guo G and Zhao H X (2000) Multilevel modeling for binary
data Annual Review of Sociology 26 441ndash462
Hainmueller J and Hiscox M J (2007) Educated preferences
explaining attitudes toward immigration in Europe
International Organization 61 399ndash442
Hallin D C and Mancini P (2004) Comparing Media
Systems Three Models of Media and Politics Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Helbling M (2014) Opposing Muslims and the Muslim head-
scarf in Western Europe European Sociological Review 30
242ndash257
Helbling M and Kriesi H (2014) Why citizens prefer high-
over low-skilled immigrants Labor market competition wel-
fare state and deservingness European Sociological Review
30 595ndash614
Higgins ET (1989) Knowledge accessibility and activation
Subjectivity and suffering from unconscious sources In J S
Uleman and J A Bargh (Eds) Unintended Thought New
York NY Guilford pp 75ndash123
Hooghe L Meeuwsen C and Quintelier E (2013) The im-
pact of education and intergroup friendship on the develop-
ment of ethnocentrism A latent growth curve model analysis
of a five-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents
European Sociological Review 29 1109ndash1121
Jensen K Nielsen J H Braelignder M Mouritsen P and
Olsen T V (2010) Tolerance and Cultural Diversity
Discourses in Denmark Accept Pluralism Working Paper 7
2010 Published by the European University Institute Robert
Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Jerit J Barabas J and Bolsen T (2006) Citizens knowledge
and the information environment American Journal of
Political Science 50 266ndash282
LeVine R A and Campbell D T (1972) Ethnocentrism
Theories of Conflict Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior
New York NY John Wiley and Son
Lijphart A (1971) Comparative politics and the comparative
method American Political Science Review 65 682ndash693
Manevska K and Achterberg P (2013) Immigration and per-
ceived ethnic threat cultural capital and economic explan-
ations European Sociological Review 29 437ndash449
Meuleman R and Lubbers M (2013) Manifestations of na-
tionalist attitudes domestic music listening participation in
national celebrations and far right voting European
Sociological Review 29 1214ndash1225
Money J (1999) Defining Immigration Policy Inventory
Quantitative Referents and Empirical Regularities Mimeo
University of California Davis
Neuman W R (1990) The threshold of public attention The
Public Opinion Quarterly 54 159ndash176
Persson A V and Musher-Eizenman D R (2005) College stu-
dentsrsquo attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist
attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35 1879ndash1892
Power J G Murphy S T and Coover G (1996) Priming
prejudice How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence
attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups
and outgroups Human Communication Research 23 36ndash58
Przeworski A and Teune H (1970) The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry New York NY Wiley
InterScience
Quillian L (1995) Prejudice as a response to perceived group
threat population composition and anti-Immigrant and racial
prejudice in Europe American Sociological Review 60
586ndash611
Reyes M A (2010) Immigration attention cycle Public
Attention Review 70 957ndash960
Saltier J and Woelfel J (1975) Inertia in cognitive processes
the role of accumulative information in attitude change
Human Communication Research 1 333ndash344
Scheepers P Gijsberts M and Coenders M (2002) Ethnic
exclusionism in European countries public opposition to civil
rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic
threat European Sociological Review 18 17ndash34
Schemer C (2012) The influence of news media on stereotypic
attitudes toward immigrants in a political campaign Journal
of Communication 62 739ndash757
Schluter E and Davidov E (2013) Contextual sources of per-
ceived group threat negative immigration-related news re-
ports immigrant group size and their interaction Spain 1996-
2007 European Sociological Review 29 179ndash191
Schwenk C R (1988) The cognitive perspective on strategic
decision making Journal of Management Studies 25 41ndash56
Schmitt-Beck R (2003) Mass communication personal com-
munication and vote choice The filter hypothesis of media in-
fluence in comparative perspective British Journal of Political
Science 33 153ndash173
SCP (2009) Jaarrapport Integratie 2009 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
SCP (2012) Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 Den Haag Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau
Shoemaker P J and Reese S D (1996) Mediating the
Message Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content New
York NY Longman
Semyonov M Raijman R and Gorodzeisky A (2006) The
rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies 1988-
2000 American Sociological Review 71 426ndash449
Shrum L J (2009) Media consumption and perceptions of social
reality effects and underlying processes In B Jennings and
M B Oliver (Eds) Media Effects Advances in Theory and
Research 3rd edn New York NY Psychology Press pp 50ndash73
Sides J and Citrin J (2007) European opinion about immigra-
tion The role of identities interests and information British
Journal of Political Science 37 477ndash504
Smith T J (1988) The Vanishing Economy Television
Coverage of Economic Affairs 1982ndash1987 Washington DC
Media Institute
282 European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-
Tajfel H and Turner J C (1979) An integrative theory of
intergroup conflict In W G Austin and S Worchel (Eds)
The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations Monterey
CA Brooks-Cole pp 33ndash47
Vergeer M Lubbers M and Scheepers P (2000) Exposure to
newspapers and attitudes towards ethnic minorities a longitudinal
analysis Howard Journal of Communications 11 127ndash143
Vliegenthart R and Boomgaarden H G (2007) Real-world
indicators and the coverage of immigration and the integra-
tion of minorities in Dutch newspapers European Journal of
Communication 22 293ndash314
Vliegenthart R and Roggeband C (2007) Framing immigra-
tion and integration relationships between press and parlia-
ment in the Netherlands International Communication
Gazette 69 295ndash319
Walgrave S and de Swert K (2004) The making of the (issues
of the) Vlaams Blok Political Communication 21 479ndash500
Ward C Bochner S and Furnham A (2001) The Psychology
of Culture Shock 2nd edn Hove Routledge
Wlezien C (2005) On the salience of political issues the prob-
lem with lsquomost importantrsquo problemrsquo Electoral Studies 24
555ndash579
Zaller J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Zaller J (1996) The myth of massive media impact revived
new support for a discredited idea In D Mutz R Brody and
P M Sniderman (Eds) Political Persuasion and Attitude
Change Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press
pp 17ndash79
European Sociological Review 2015 Vol 31 No 3 283
at Universiteit van A
msterdam
on February 2 2016httpesroxfordjournalsorg
Dow
nloaded from
- jcu089-TF1
- jcu089-TF2
- jcu089-TF3
- jcu089-TF4
- jcu089-TF5
- jcu089-TF6
- jcu089-TF7
-