Refugees in Modern Media: Evidence from Germany

• In Event: The Refugee Crisis from Both Sides: Attitudes towards and of Syrian Refugees

Abstract

The effects of refugee migration permeates most aspects of a recipient society, not least native inclusionary attitudes and behaviors towards refugees. While recent research has emphasized measuring the extent to which direct exposure to refugees affects inclusion, much less is known about the more frequent type of refugee exposure natives experience: exposure to refugees through media representation. This project establishes key patterns to how much and in what ways modern media represents refugee stories, how this has changed over time, and explores how major shifts in the ways refugee stories have changed affect native inclusion using a unique television corpus combined with a nationally representative randomized survey experiment. The media corpus covers the universe of broadcasted news on a major public television service in Germany throughout the period leading up to and following the globally renowned “Open Door” announcement in the Syrian refugee crisis.

Authors

• Adeline Lo, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Oliver Markus Lang, University of Wisconsin, Madison