How Do Immigrant-Origin and Native Voters Consume Political News Media During a National Election Campaign?

Abstract

This is the first quantitative empirical contribution to examine how immigrant-origin voters use different types of political news media in the course of an election campaign. As this group of voters often has a lower average turnout than natives, it is surprising that we know little about its media usage behaviour. Using novel data from the IMGES II survey conducted during the 2021 German national election campaign in the western German metropolis of Duisburg, I compare the patterns of political news media use among immigrant-origin and native voters. This encompasses self-reported frequencies of political media use, including television and social media party–channel subscriptions as well as the use of foreign language and national newspapers. The use frequencies of these political news media types do not change notably over time, but there are cross-sectional gaps between immigrant-origin and native voters. Multivariate analyses reveal that these differences can be explained by sociodemographic group compositions. However, some media-consumption patterns remain distinct among immigrants. The results show that the preferred languages of foreign newspapers are more homogeneous among Germans of Turkish descent and Russian Germans than for the rest of the local electorate. Immigrant-origin voters also subscribe to a more diverse range of party social media channels. This is a possible sign that these groups use social media as a source of information rather than as an expression of an existing party preference.