IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctl/louvir/2023021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border

Author

Listed:
  • Silvia Peracchi

    (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES))

Abstract

The massive inflows of migrants across the Mediterranean has generated widespread political attention and backlash. This paper explores the impact of migrants’ displacements at the EU’s internal borders, due to militarized border push-backs and arising from the European migrant crisis in the 2010s. It investigates how these displacements affect both the local news market and the local political economy. To do so, it relies on a policy implemented in June 2015, whereby French authorities introduced militarized controls at the Italian frontier to redirect migrants and asylum seekers, originally intending to cross the border irregularly, back to the Italian territory. These dynamics created a quasi-experimental setting, where natives in the Italian region were unevenly exposed to pushed back migrants: those residing close to the French border experienced more directly the evolution of events. Using novel text and count data from local news in the interested areas of Liguria, Italy, between 2012 and 2019, this study finds that, following the border push-backs, media coverage of migration decayed with commuting distance to the border. Conversely, anti-immigrant discourse in the news exhibited a relative increase in areas least directly impacted by the border events. Exploring further this framing dimension, the results turn out to be shaped by readers’ demand and to be closely associated with local news penetration. Finally, this study documents that voting preferences share a similar direction to news slant, while a related broad pattern also appears in hate-crime records.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia Peracchi, 2023. "Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2023021, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvir:2023021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/IRES/2023021.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edo, Anthony & Giesing, Yvonne & Öztunc, Jonathan & Poutvaara, Panu, 2019. "Immigration and electoral support for the far-left and the far-right," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 99-143.
    2. Giovanni Facchini & Anna Maria Mayda & Riccardo Puglisi, 2017. "Illegal immigration and media exposure: evidence on individual attitudes," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-36, December.
    3. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 280-316, April.
    4. Grün, Bettina & Hornik, Kurt, 2011. "topicmodels: An R Package for Fitting Topic Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 40(i13).
    5. Song Chen, 2000. "Probability Density Function Estimation Using Gamma Kernels," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 52(3), pages 471-480, September.
    6. Simon P. Anderson & John McLaren, 2012. "Media Mergers And Media Bias With Rational Consumers," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 831-859, August.
    7. James M. Snyder & David Strömberg, 2010. "Press Coverage and Political Accountability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 355-408, April.
    8. Anna Maria Mayda & Giovanni Peri & Walter Steingress, 2022. "The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 358-389, January.
    9. Christian Dustmann & Francesco Fasani & Tommaso Frattini & Luigi Minale & Uta Schönberg, 2017. "On the economics and politics of refugee migration," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 32(91), pages 497-550.
    10. Martin Halla & Alexander F. Wagner & Josef Zweimüller, 2017. "Immigration and Voting for the Far Right," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(6), pages 1341-1385.
    11. Brantly Callaway & Andrew Goodman-Bacon & Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna, 2021. "Difference-in-Differences with a Continuous Treatment," Papers 2107.02637, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    12. Otto, Alkis Henri & Steinhardt, Max Friedrich, 2014. "Immigration and election outcomes — Evidence from city districts in Hamburg," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 67-79.
    13. Giordani, Paolo E. & Ruta, Michele, 2013. "Coordination failures in immigration policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 55-67.
    14. Quentin David & Jean‐Benoit Pilet & Gilles Van Hamme, 2018. "Scale Matters in Contextual Analysis of Extreme Right Voting and Political Attitudes," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(4), pages 509-536, November.
    15. Tim Groseclose & Jeffrey Milyo, 2005. "A Measure of Media Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1191-1237.
    16. Stefano DellaVigna & Ethan Kaplan, 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1187-1234.
    17. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    18. Benesch, Christine & Loretz, Simon & Stadelmann, David & Thomas, Tobias, 2019. "Media coverage and immigration worries: Econometric evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 52-67.
    19. Matt Taddy, 2013. "Multinomial Inverse Regression for Text Analysis," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 108(503), pages 755-770, September.
    20. Matteo Gamalerio & Margherita Negri, 2023. "Not welcome anymore: the effect of electoral incentives on the reception of refugees," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 23(4), pages 901-920.
    21. Jakub Lonsky, 2021. "Does immigration decrease far-right popularity? Evidence from Finnish municipalities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 97-139, January.
    22. Campo, Francesco & Giunti, Sara & Mendola, Mariapia, 2021. "The Refugee Crisis and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from the Italian Dispersal Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 14084, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    23. Nikolaos Askitas, 2015. "Google search activity data and breaking trends," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 206-206, November.
    24. Friedman, Jerome H. & Hastie, Trevor & Tibshirani, Rob, 2010. "Regularization Paths for Generalized Linear Models via Coordinate Descent," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 33(i01).
    25. Andreas Steinmayr, 2021. "Contact versus Exposure: Refugee Presence and Voting for the Far Right," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(2), pages 310-327, May.
    26. Milena Djourelova, 2023. "Persuasion through Slanted Language: Evidence from the Media Coverage of Immigration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(3), pages 800-835, March.
    27. Matteo Gamalerio & Margherita Negri, 2023. "Not welcome anymore: the effect of electoral incentives on the reception of refugees," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 901-920.
    28. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    29. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Silvia Peracchi, 2022. "The Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border," CESifo Working Paper Series 10070, CESifo.
    2. Sekou Keita & Thomas Renault & Jérôme Valette, 2023. "The Usual Suspects: Offender Origin, Media Reporting and Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigration," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(657), pages 322-362.
    3. Bredtmann, Julia, 2022. "Immigration and electoral outcomes: Evidence from the 2015 refugee inflow to Germany," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    4. Bernhardt, Lea & Dewenter, Ralf & Thomas, Tobias, 2020. "Measuring partisan media bias in US Newscasts from 2001-2012," Working Paper 183/2020, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, revised 15 Nov 2022.
    5. Campo, Francesco & Giunti, Sara & Mendola, Mariapia, 2021. "The Refugee Crisis and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from the Italian Dispersal Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 14084, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Bernhardt, Lea & Dewenter, Ralf & Thomas, Tobias, 2023. "Measuring partisan media bias in US newscasts from 2001 to 2012," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    7. Gamalerio, Matteo & Luca, Mario & Romarri, Alessio & Viskanic, Max, 2023. "Refugee reception, extreme-right voting, and compositional amenities: Evidence from Italian municipalities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    8. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    9. Campo, Francesco & Giunti, Sara & Mendola, Mariapia & Tura, Giulia, 2023. "Political Backlash to Refugee Settlement: Cultural and Economic Drivers," IZA Discussion Papers 16245, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Francesco Sobbrio, 2012. "A Citizen-Editors Model of News Media," RSCAS Working Papers 2012/61, European University Institute.
    11. Friebel, Guido & Heinz, Matthias, 2014. "Media slant against foreign owners: Downsizing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 97-106.
    12. Sobbrio, Francesco, 2014. "Citizen-editors' endogenous information acquisition and news accuracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 43-53.
    13. Strömberg, David & Prat, Andrea, 2011. "The Political Economy of Mass Media," CEPR Discussion Papers 8246, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Biondo, A.E. & Pluchino, A. & Rapisarda, A., 2018. "Modeling surveys effects in political competitions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 503(C), pages 714-726.
    15. Matthew Gentzkow & Bryan T. Kelly & Matt Taddy, 2017. "Text as Data," NBER Working Papers 23276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Schirner, Sebastian & Hessami, Zohal, 2023. "Migration Shocks, Elections, and Political Selection," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277670, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Ralf Dewenter & Uwe Dulleck & Tobias Thomas, 2020. "Does the 4th estate deliver? The Political Coverage Index and its application to media capture," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 292-328, September.
    18. Bernhardt, Lea & Dewenter, Ralf & Thomas, Tobias, 2020. "Watchdog or loyal servant? Political media bias in US newscasts," DICE Discussion Papers 348, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    19. Cerqua, Augusto & Zampollo, Federico, 2023. "Deeds or words? The local influence of anti-immigrant parties on foreigners’ flows," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    20. Dewenter, Ralf & Linder, Melissa & Thomas, Tobias, 2019. "Can media drive the electorate? The impact of media coverage on voting intentions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 245-261.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Media slant; EU borders; immigration; diff-in-diff;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctl:louvir:2023021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Virginie LEBLANC (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iruclbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.