Diversity in Western Countries: Journalism Culture, Migration Integration Policy and Public Opinion

Stefan Mertens,Olivier Standaert,Rozane De Cock,Leen D'Haenens

doi:10.17645/mac.v7i1.1632

Stefan Mertens, Olivier Standaert + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1632

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Abstract

Earlier research has shown that public opinion and policy lines on the topic of immigrant integration are interrelated. This article investigates a sample of 24 countries for which data are available in the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), the World Values Survey (WVS), as well as in the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS). To our knowledge, this is the first time that these data are connected to one another to study journalists’ views on their role to promote tolerance and cultural diversity in societies with diverging immigration policies. The WJS presents an analysis of the role conceptions of professional journalists throughout the world, including a variable measuring the extent to which journalists conceive promoting tolerance and cultural diversity as one of their tasks. Our findings show that journalists (as measured in the WJS) mostly tend to promote tolerance and cultural diversity in countries with more restrictive immigration policies (measured by MIPEX) and less emancipative values (measured by the WVS) Promoting tolerance and cultural diversity is associated with a so-called interventionist approach in journalism culture. Furthermore, we used cluster analyses to attribute the countries under study to meaningful, separate groups. More precisely, we discriminate four clusters of the press among the 24 countries under investigation.

Highlights

Issue This article is part of the issue “Communicating on/with Minorities”, edited Leen d’Haenens and Willem Joris (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Emphasis on the importance to promote tolerance does not significantly correlate with the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) scores (r = −0.133, p = .534), nor does this role perception significantly correlate with emancipative values (r = −0.331, p = .114)
The journalistic role perceptions that correlate most strongly with the other databases are interventionism and collaboration. Both these journalistic role perceptions tend to be associated with lower MIPEX values and lower emancipative values

Summary

Introduction

Issue This article is part of the issue “Communicating on/with Minorities”, edited Leen d’Haenens and Willem Joris (KU Leuven, Belgium). Integration of immigrants and immigration as a whole is a major political issue, in the realm of policy, and in those of public opinion and journalism (e.g., Watson & Riffe, 2013). This article explores the interrelationships between data on policy, public opinion and journalistic cultures in an effort to integrate databases that were hitherto only studied separately, and we do so with an emphasis on journalistic cultures. The databases used are the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), the World Values Survey (WVS), and the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS). Communication scientists (see, e.g., Vliegenthart, 2015) have stressed the importance of a third sphere alongside cultural attitudes and policy orientations, where political issues get constructed: the media sphere. There are important agenda interactions between political actors, the general public, and the media. The impact of the media on the public is currently assessed as important, but not as unilaterally and predominantly as has been suggested by early communication scholars

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