Moderating effect of group cue on processing news frames on immigration

Abstract

This paper presents a study on socio-cognitive effects of the news frames on immigration, where 186 university students participated as experimental subjects. The news story used in the experiment mentioned the information about immigration increase in Spain by highlighting a) the positive (economic contribution frame) vs. negative (crime growth frame) consequences; and, b) information about the origin of the immigrants (group cue) in the news story (Latinos vs. Moroccans). The results showed that the type of stressed news frame in the report exerted significant socio-cognitive effects. A differential effect in terms of group cue is also observed. It is concluded that framing effect can be conceptualized as a process ruled by heuristic application that guides information processing based on the peripheral cues in it.