Are we all Charlie? Tolerance and immigration attitudes after the Charlie Hebdo attacks

"The War on Terror" set a strong precedent for the reactions to the terrorist attacks that followed 9/11. For many years this framing was the main framing of terrorism both in the media and by central political actors across the globe. Research in the same period has found a negative effect of terrorism on attitudes towards out-groups and towards immigration. However, it is unclear if these findings are generalizable to attacks that have other types of reactions than the "War on Terror"-framing. This paper studies the attitudinal consequences of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Contrary to the "War on terror"-framing, the French president Francois Hollande framed the attacks as attacks on the French Republic, emphasizing central republican values in his response. These themes resonated in the public and the French public responded to the attacks in massive demonstrations across France. The seventh round of the European Social Survey is used to study the effects of the attacks on attitudes towards immigration and immigrants in both France and six other European countries. The results reveal an increase in support for restrictions on immigration in the six other European countries, but no change in France. The difference between France and the other European countries is interpreted as a consequence of the political response to the attacks in France. While the emphasis on republican values resonated in the French public, the other European publics both had less knowledge of this French discourse and were probably exposed to a different type of media environment after the attacks.