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In this study, we explore two factors of selective exposure and their effect on the relation between political sympathies and xenophobic attitudes in Sweden. Previous studies implies that internet and social media-platforms, as well as political interest, are two important factors behind selective news consumption in todays fragmented media landscape. Based on previous studies we hypothesised that; news consumption via social media/internet and political interest effects the relation between political sympathies and xenophobia, and that the effect is positive if the individual sympathies with Sweden democrats and negative if the sympathies lie with the Left party. The result shows that among all Swedish parties the political interested individuals tend to be less xenophobic, while the effect of sympathizing with the Sweden democrats and being political interested shows an increased level of xenophobia. The same result could be observed for Sweden democrats that consumed news via social media and internet, where an increased level of consumption resulted in increased level xenophobic attitudes. The study found no support for the effects of news consumption via social media/internet and political interest on the relation between Left party sympathizers and xenophobic attitudes.

This paper investigates the relationship between national identity and attitudes towards immigrants. It examines three countries with different history of nation building and immigration: Finland, Great Britain and the USA. It is assumed that the differences in nation building and immigration across the countries have led to a different understanding of national identity and attitudes towards immigrants. The hypothesis is that the relationship between national identity and attitudes towards immigrants is not consistent but is dependent on how belonging to the nation is defined. This paper uses eight different aspects to measure the understanding of national identity. Attitudes towards immigrants are explored on six dimensions: criminality, economy, labor market, society, culture and the number of immigrants. The paper uses the theory of ethnic and civic types of national identity as a basis for the analysis. The ethnic definition of national identity is assumed to be related to anti-immigrant attitudes while a more civic definition may even lead to more open attitudes towards immigrants. Ordinal logistic regression has been used to estimate these relationships. The data used comes from the International Social Survey Programme’s ‘National Identity’ module from 2013. The results show clear differences between the countries both in the general attitudes towards immigrants and the prominence of anti-immigrant attitudes. In all countries ethnic definition of national identity is connected to more negative attitudes towards immigrants. However, there are differences in how individual aspects of identity correlate with different dimensions of attitudes towards immigrants. The number of people viewing the ethnic aspects of national identity as important is larger in Great Britain and anti-immigrant attitudes generally more widespread than in Finland and the USA. Additionally, the results from ordinal logistic regressions show that while the majority of aspects of national identity correlated with anti-immigrant attitudes, some of the civic aspects were connected to more positive attitudes. The results differed between the countries suggesting that the relationship between national identity and attitudes towards immigrants is not consistent and that it does depend on the definition of national identity.

The aim of this thesis is to determine what affects cross-national differences in attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Europe while using mainly theoretical framework of the Ethnic Competition Theory and the Human Capital Theory. We use multilevel models to test the hypotheses based on these theories. We use individual level data from European Social Survey 2014/2015 and country level data from World Bank, Eurostat, and MIPEX. The thesis finds a support for the Human Capital Theory, but does not find a clear support for the Ethnic Competition Theory. Even though economic vulnerability of a person is associated with attitudes towards immigrants, this association can be due to education. It seems in this thesis that people with higher education tend to hold more positive attitudes towards immigration of both skill levels of immigrants, professionals and laborers, than individuals with less years of education. Therefore, we find a support for the Human Capital Theory. On the contextual level, more permissive migrant integration policies seem to have positive effect on attitudes towards immigrants. Further investigation of the association between attitudes towards immigrants and immigration, and education and migrant integration policies is needed.