[séminaire CREM] Terrorism and Reporting on Immigration in the Media: Evidence from France

Abstract: In this article, we explore the role of terrorism on mass media reportings related to migration issues, in details. Using for the first time natural language processing (NLP) methods to analyze French news articles about immigration before and after different waves of terrorist attacks, we find that significant terrorism acts are causing a shift in both the intensity and the tone of reporting about migration up to 3 to 8 weeks after a significant attack. This effect happens to be robust across French media press from different political orientations. We also document that in the municipalities where people were exposed to more local media reporting with more negative tones, the vote share in favor of the main national French anti-migrant party were higher in an Nationwide election which happened to take place three weeks after the Bataclan events.

coécrit avec Mathieu Picault, Mamadou Sacko et Ahmed Tritah