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

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Abstract

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

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  • Sekou Keita & Thomas Renault & Jérôme Valette, 2021. "The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives' Attitudes Towards Immigration," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 21004, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:21004
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    5. Kai Gehring & Joop Adema & Panu Poutvaara & Joop Age Harm Adema, 2022. "Immigrant Narratives," CESifo Working Paper Series 10026, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Immigration; Crime; Media Bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media

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