Putting Our Own People First: The Content and Effects of Online Right-wing Populist Discourse Surrounding the European Refugee Crisis

The 2015 refugee crisis has sparked heated polarized debates throughout the globe. Yet, to date, we know too little about the discursive framing of the refugee crisis by various actors on online media, and the effect of right-wing populist messages on stereotypical images of refugees. The extensive qualitative content analysis reported in this paper (Study 1, N = 1,784) shows that the framing of populist politicians and citizens overlap in the problem definitions. However, citizens attribute more responsibility to refugees themselves and perceive that the native people are relatively deprived. Traditional news media are more divided. Overall, tabloid media define refugees as a problem, and broadsheet media frame them as victim. The second experimental study (N = 277) demonstrates that messages that blame immigrants for increasing crime rates activate negative stereotypical images of migrants among people with stronger perceptions of relative deprivation. These messages have the opposite effect among citizens with weaker perceptions of relative deprivation. These findings provide important insights into the political consequences of anti-immigration framing. Online media discourse is generally one-sided, and exposure to anti-immigration messages may polarize the electorate in opposing camps.