Television and anti-immigrant sentiments: the mediating role of fear of crime and perceived ethnic diversity

ABSTRACT

Previous research has established a correlation between fear of crime and anti-immigrant sentiments. In this paper, we explore the role of television in explaining individual differences in fear of crime, perceived ethnic diversity and anti-immigrant sentiments. We use the ‘Social Cohesion Indicators in Flanders’ data, a representative survey in the Flemish region of Belgium, combined with real-life indicators of ethnic diversity and crime at the community level. Results of a multilevel structural equation model suggest that watching television is positively associated with fear of crime and perceived ethnic diversity, which in turn is associated with anti-immigrant sentiments. Preference for public television is, however, associated with lower anti-immigrant sentiments, perceived ethnic diversity and fear of crime levels. Real crime and ethnic diversity levels are only weakly related to anti-immigrant sentiments. We conclude that especially perceptions are important in influencing anti-immigrant sentiments and that television use is associated with these perceptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• anti-immigrant sentiments
• fear of crime
• crime
• perceived ethnic diversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laura Jacobs is a Ph.D. researcher at the Centre for Political Research at the University of Leuven. She holds a Master’s degree in political science. Her research interests include news media, media effects, anti-immigrant attitudes and prejudice.

Marc Hooghe (Ph.D., University of Brussels, 1997, and University of Rotterdam, 2002) is a full professor at the Centre for Citizenship and Democracy at the University of Leuven. His research interests include social capital, prejudice and political attitudes.

Thomas de Vroome (Ph.D., Utrecht University, 2013) is a researcher at the Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice. His research interests include the migration and integration of, and prejudice toward, migrants and refugees.

Notes

1 There is no specific theoretical reason to assume that the effect of unemployment experiences would disappear after a specific number of years, but we simply had to include the question as it was phrased in this survey.

2 Victimization thus asks about any punishable act. A measure asking about specific types of crime (e.g. assault and robbery) could have presented a better measure, but was not available.

3 Prior research suggested that especially changes in levels of ethnic diversity are important (Meuleman et al. 2009; Hopkins 2010; Hawley 2011; Stupi et al. 2014). We have therefore also used the change over the last nine years before the survey as community-level independent variable. This measure, however, is not ideal as many Flemish communities are rather small, so that results are based on small numbers and are not always reliable. Most likely as a consequence, results of this analysis proved to be rather unstable.

4 Model fit statistics show a good fit for the proposed model. χ²(2)=1.146, ns, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA)=0.000 and comparative fit index (CFI)=1.000. The chi square in the SEM model has a value of 1.14, and when the chi square is lower or equal to the degrees of freedom, the RMSEA adopts a value of 0 and the CFI of 1. It is thus more informative to consider the value of the chi square in this regard, and as this value is low and not significant, this suggests a good model fit.