Ebola, Elections, and Immigration: How Politicizing an Epidemic Can Shape Public Attitudes
Citation: Claire L. Adida, Kim Yi Dionne, & Melina R. Platas (November 09, 2017) Ebola, Elections, and Immigration: How Politicizing an Epidemic Can Shape Public Attitudes. Politics, Groups, and Identities (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1080/21565503.2018.1484376
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1080/21565503.2018.1484376
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1080/21565503.2018.1484376
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Ebola, Elections, and Immigration: How Politicizing an Epidemic Can Shape Public Attitudes
Download: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2018.1484376
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Summary
Research Questions:
Investigate whether the mere presence of an infectious disease threat and especially one tied to a foreign carrier, results in more exclusionary attitudes toward immigration.
Examine how the politicization of a public health threat can affect anti-immigrant sentiment.
Methods
An online survey experiment among 3881 U.S. residents in late 2014 – during the U.S. Ebola crisis and midterm elections. The survey had four sections: the collection of pre-treatment covariates, including gender, age, education level, and party ID; the randomly assigned treatment; the collection of outcome measures; and a manipulation check. Randomly assigned respondents into four treatment groups and one control group. Those in the treatment groups were provided an Ebola factsheet before answering a set of questions to assess attitudes toward immigration. Two of the treatment groups received information about the identity of the carrier of Ebola into the United States (either American or African), and the remaining two groups read a statement made by a politician about the Ebola response (described as either a generic American or specifically a Republican politician). Those in the control group did not read any factsheet before answering questions about immigration attitudes. Compared those who saw any factsheet (T1 through T4) to those who did not (control), to examine whether the mere mention of Ebola, in the form of a factsheet, affected attitudes toward immigration. Examine whether those who received a cue about the outgroup status of the Ebola carrier (T2, the African carrier) held more exclusionary attitudes toward immigration than either the control group or those who received a cue about the ingroup status of the carrier
Results
Found that mentioning the Ebola crisis in the context of an informational factsheet has no discernible effect on attitudes toward immigration.
Priming respondents to the African origins of the carrier does not exacerbate immigrant exclusion.
Theoretical and Practical Relevance
Politicizing the public health threat increases immigrant exclusion, but primarily among Republicans who read a statement by a Republican politician theorizing the effects of politicization on immigrant attitudes are driven by partisanship.
