Examining the effects of news coverage linking undocumented immigrants with criminality: Policy and punitive implications

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although research suggests that there is no meaningful real-world connection between crime rates and undocumented immigrants, media coverage of this group almost exclusively portrays them as criminals. The present two-study investigation experimentally tests the effects of exposure to crime news depicting undocumented immigrant suspects on White viewers’ social judgments. To this end, assumptions from social identity theory were applied to research and theorizing on mediated intergroup threat and compound penalties for immigrant criminality. Results from Study 1 and Study 2 indicate that when White viewers are exposed to threatening crime news featuring undocumented immigrants, out-group bias emerges in the form of harsher sentencing. In Study 1, when exposed to highly threatening coverage, attitudes toward immigration and in-group identification partially mediated and moderated this relationship, respectively.