Anti-Immigrant Party Support and Media Visibility: A Cross-Party, Over-Time Perspective

Abstract

Explanations of the performance of Western European anti-immigrant parties feature prominently in the literature on electoral behaviour and the mass media have been introduced as an important explanatory variable in these analyses. In this article we advance our understanding of the relationship between mass media news reporting and anti-immigrant party support in three ways. First, we go beyond extant research to consider the visibility of anti-immigrant parties and party leaders in the news, rather than anti-immigration issues more generally. Second, in addition to analysing media effects on a party's popularity we also consider the reverse relationship, the effects of a party's popularity on media coverage of the party. Finally, we analyse the relationships from a cross-party perspective, using time-series analysis for six parties in three countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany) over the past two decades. Our results show strongest support for the effects of party and particularly leader visibility in the news on anti-immigrant party success, rather than the reverse relationship.