Public debate in the media matters: evidence from the European refugee crisis
Open access
Date
2020Type
- Journal Article
Abstract
In this paper, we take a novel approach to study the empirical relationship between public debate in the media and asylum acceptance rates in Europe from 2002–2016. In theory, an asylum seeker should experience the same likelihood of being granted refugee status from each of the 20 European countries we study. Yet, in practice, acceptance rates vary widely for nearly every asylum country of origin. We address this inconsistency with a data-driven approach by analyzing refugee-related news articles and data on asylum decisions across 20 Europe countries for more than 100 asylum seekers’ countries of origin. We find that: (i) public debate sentiment in the media is strongly associated with European countries’ diverging asylum practices, much more so than social, cultural or economic factors, and (ii) by combining different measures of public debate we can make out-of-sample predictions within 3% of true acceptance rates (on average). We conclude by discussing the practical implications of our findings for European asylum practices. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000416242Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
EPJ Data ScienceVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
SpringerSubject
Public debate in the media; Asylum acceptance rates; Granger-causalityOrganisational unit
03784 - Helbing, Dirk / Helbing, Dirk
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