Contextual sources of perceived group threat: Negative immigration-related news reports, immigrant group size and their interaction, Spain 1996-2007

Abstract

This study attempts to further our understanding of the contextual sources of anti-immigrant sentiments by simultaneously examining the impact of immigrant group size, negative immigration-related news reports and their interaction on natives’ perceived group threat. We test our theoretical assumptions using repeated cross-sectional survey data from Spain during the time period 1996 to 2007, enriched with regional statistics on immigrant group size and information from a longitudinal content analysis of newspaper reports. Drawing on multilevel regression models, our findings show that a greater number of negative immigration-related news reports increases perceived group threat over and above the influence of immigrant group size. Additionally, our findings indicate that the impact of negative immigration-related news reports on perceived group threat is amplified (weakened) in regions with a smaller (larger) immigrant group size. Collectively, these results testify to the importance of immigrant group size and negative immigration-related news reports as key contextual sources of natives’ perceived group threat.