The moderating effect of prior attitudes on framing effects and their combined contribution to the public politicization of EU immigration policy

This study investigates the effects of news frames on public politicization (i.e., salience and polarization) and the moderating role of prior attitudes on this relationship. An experiment was set-up among a representative sample of the Dutch population between June and July 2011. The results yield no significant direct framing effects, only when prior attitudes are taken into account significant framing effects become visible. Bigger incongruence between the tone of the message and individual attitudes causes a decrease in issue salience among the initially negative and an increase in among the initially positive through a mechanism of risk perception. Incongruence also yields significant change in line with the tone of the message among the initially negative, and insignificant changes among the positive. As the results largely depend upon prior attitudes, framing effects can either add or reduce politicization dependent on the composition of the population.