Effect of News Consumption on Attitudes Towards Migrants: An Experimental Study Among Hungarian Adolescents

To what extent does exposure to media content shape political preferences? Observational work on the question faces strong obstacles to answering this question because of the self-selection of citizens to news content bolstering their pre-existing views. In the meantime, experimental studies on media effects are compromised by their external validity given they rely on forced exposure to media content subjects otherwise would not be consuming. In this study we report the results of an online field experiment leveraging a unique setting and data. In particular, we rely on a panel study of Hungarian adolescents and a randomized experiment in which participants are randomly assigned to different coverage of the issue of migration. Exploiting a case in which most participants were exposed to a completely one-sided messaging environment we test the effectiveness of episodic frames included in news stories about migration. Specifically, we assess the possibly positive role of individuating stories of refugees on general affect towards immigrants in Hungary.