The Latent Profiles of Media Exposures Regarding Immigrants and Its Impact on Discrimination: Focusing on the Mediation Effect of Perceived Threat

Background/purpose: There has been prejudice and social discrimination(DC) against immigrants, especially those from developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated DC toward them. Additionally, South Koreans who have no direct contact with immigrants have also developed prejudice due to media reports of criminal activities committed by immigrants. Para-social contact theory suggests that the way media portrays outer groups can influence how ingroup members perceive them. In other words, media coverage can lead to perceived threat (PT) towards the outer group, which can ultimately affect DC against immigrants. This study aims to identify latent profiles of media depicting immigrants and examine whether PT towards the outer group mediates the relationship between the identified profiles and DC against immigrants.

Methods: Using the 2021 National Survey on Multicultural Acceptance in Korea (n=4,994), LPA was conducted using four indicators: favorable, victimized, and threatening images, and public service announcements about immigrants. We examined whether the identified profiles influenced DC against immigrants and whether PT mediated the relationship. DC was evaluated using seven items including ‘I would criticize the idea of immigrants creating online communities in their own languages and operating within them’, ‘Korean Chinese or North Korean defectors living in Korea would be lazy when it comes to working.’ and ‘It is difficult to trust and delegate work to foreign immigrants from developing countries’. PT was assessed with 4 items, including ‘Foreign workers will take away jobs from Koreans.’ and ‘An increase in the number of foreign workers leads to a rise in the crime rate’. Socio-demographic factors were included as control factors.

Results: A total of three latent profiles were identified and named as ‘Lowest media exposure (10.36%)’, ‘Medium media exposure (24.24%)’, and ‘Highest media exposure (65.40%)’. When compared to those with medium media exposure, latent profiles with the lowest exposure showed a significantly lower level of DC (B = -0.10, p = .02), while those in the highest media exposure showed a higher level of DC (B = 0.13, p < .001). When examining the mediation effect of PT on this relationship, only those with higher media exposure (B = 0.20, p < .001) had significantly higher PT than those with medium media exposure, and significantly mediated the relationship between media exposure and DC. That is, for those with the highest media exposure are more likely to develop PT than those with medium exposure and eventually exhibit greater DC. On the other hand, there is no significant difference in PT between low and medium media exposure.

Conclusions: Even the latent group with higher media exposure had been frequently exposed to both positive and negative images of immigrants, this group was found to have stronger PT and DC against immigrants. The results imply that the influence of threatening images of immigrants may be more strongly engraved in one’s mind than that of positive images and result in the generalization error. Thus, it is important not to disproportionally report or emphasize undesirable or unfavorable incidents of a few immigrants.