Scott Blinder

Constructing Immigrants: Portrayals of Migrant Groups in British National Newspapers, 2010–2012

Public opposition to immigration in Britain reflects perceptions of immigrants that focus disproportionately on “illegal” immigration and asylum seekers, rather than more numerous workers, students, and family members. This study examines coverage of immigration in the British national press, to see whether press portrayals of migrants provide a basis for these images of immigration underlying public attitudes. We use corpus linguistic methods to analyze 43 million words of news from 2010 to 2012. Among other findings, we show that press portrayals match public perceptions of migrants, with “illegal immigrants” and “failed asylum seekers” as predominant depictions in broadsheet and tabloid newspapers.

Dissonance Persists Reproduction of Racial Attitudes Among Post-Civil Rights Cohorts of White Americans

Attitudes toward race and politics continue to show tensions between antiracist norms and racist stereotypes, even among new generations of White Americans raised in an era of consensus on antiracist social norms. I suggest that this “dissonance” stems from a process of “two-tracked socialization” and I demonstrate the persistence of such dissonant attitudes in two ways. First, in the aggregate, the youngest cohorts of White Americans do not greatly differ from older generations in their policy preferences on racial matters and beliefs about race, politics, and inequality. Second, stereotypes still influence policy preferences among younger cohorts. On the second point, I replicate Gilenss work on the racialization of welfare policy attitudes with more recent data and added attention to differences and similarities across birth cohorts.

The Anti‐Racism Norm in Western European Immigration Politics: Why we Need to Consider it and How to Measure it

Abstract In this article, we propose a new research agenda aimed at improving theoretical and empirical models of immigration politics in Western Europe. In short, we argue for explicitly taking into account the social norm against racism that is neglected in existing research in this area. In theoretical terms, we draw on existing political science literature on European immigration and US race politics as well as on work in social psychology to explain why and how we think the anti‐racism norm influences opinion formation, the political behaviour of individuals, and the effectiveness of various parties’ mobilization strategies. In empirical terms, we propose and present results from a pilot study validating two individual‐level measures of the anti‐racism norm – one that measures external motivation to control prejudice and another that measures internal motivation. The pilot study shows that the anti‐racism norm exists and can be meaningfully measured in a Western European context. We conclude that the suggested research agenda appears theoretically promising and empirically feasible.

Numbers and Waves, the Illegal and the Skilled: The Effects of Media Portrayals of Immigrants on Public Opinion in Britain

Public opinion often diverges widely from reality on the size and makeup of immigrant populations but prior research has not established whether the media has any causal role in the construction of these perceptions. This paper examines how actually-occurring media portrayals of immigrants in Britain - drawn from recent large-scale quantitative studies of the British national press - affect attitudes toward and perceptions of immigrants among members of the British public. We report on an original survey experiment that tests the impact of various news frames. Several outcomes are measured including the individual’s estimates of the size of the immigrant group, perceptions of who immigrants are, and immigration policy preferences. We find support for the notion that even subtle coaxing can shift public conceptions of immigration, in this case toward more realistic understandings of the overall size and make-up of the immigrant population in Britain. The implications for the link between media frames and public opinion arising from these findings are discussed.

Media Independence through Routine Press-State Relations: Immigration and Government Statistics in the British Press:

When and how does press coverage maintain independence from governments’ preferred language? Leading scholarship argues that elites shape media content, especially in foreign affairs settings where journalists rely on official sources. But do media push back in domestic policy contexts? Focusing on immigration in Britain, we find press coverage exhibits signs of autonomy that rely on the state’s administrative branches. Our evidence comes from automated linguistic analysis of 190,000 items of migration coverage in nineteen national British newspapers from 2006 to 2015, and press releases published by the U.K. Home Office between 2010 and 2015. We show that the press increasingly portrayed immigration in terms of its scale. Then, by comparing the dynamics of a key government policy—lowering “net migration”—in press and Home Office rhetoric, we illustrate the limits of the government to insert its desired language into the press. Finally, we argue routine press interactions with the nonpolitical Office for National Statistics enabled coverage that diverged from politicians’ preferred lines. Our study contributes to press-state theory by providing evidence of media semiautonomy in a domestic policy arena, and highlighting the often-overlooked role of routine, bureaucratic procedure in supporting that autonomy.

Roots of group threat: anti-prejudice motivations and implicit bias in perceptions of immigrants as threats

ABSTRACT The perception of “group threat” is well known to predict opposition to immigration and negative attitudes toward ethnic minorities in Europe. However, the relationship between group threat and prejudice remains unclear, theoretically and empirically. We offer a new lens for viewing this relationship, using a dual process model of prejudice to help explain individual perceptions of threat as a function of both implicit prejudice and explicit motivation to control or avoid prejudice. Using original survey data from Britain and Germany, we employ measures of explicit motivation to control prejudice (MCP), and implicit intergroup attitudes (measured by the affect misattribution procedure) that are novel in this context. We find that perceived threat is independently associated with implicit attitudes and both internal and, in Britain, external MCP. We thereby connect group threat theory with an updated individual-level model of prejudice.

The ‘illegal’ and the skilled: effects of media portrayals on perceptions of immigrants in Britain

ABSTRACT Public perceptions often diverge widely from reality on the size and make-up of immigrant populations, with likely consequences for public opinion about immigration. Prior research has not established whether the media has any causal role in the construction of these perceptions. This paper examines whether and how actually occurring media portrayals of immigrants in Britain affect perceptions of immigrants among members of the British public. We begin by conducting a large-scale quantitative study of the British national press. We then report on an original survey experiment that tests for causal impact of news frames derived from the media study. Specifically, we focus on three depictions of immigrants: as ‘illegal’, Eastern European, or highly skilled. Results show that even subtle media interventions can shift public perceptions of immigration, in this case towards more realistic understandings of the overall size and make-up of the immigrant population in Britain. We suggest empirical, theoretical, and methodological implications for the study of media effects on public opinion towards immigration.