During the last decades, Europe and the Middle East were targets of a wave of Islamist terrorist attacks, sparking intense debates on immigrating in politics and the media. Understanding how societies respond to terrorism is crucial for informing policy decisions aimed at political stability and mitigating the rise of populist parties. However, existing evidence on whether citizens’ attitudes are affected by terrorist attacks remains inconclusive and suffers from various shortcomings. Our project seeks to fill these research gaps and investigate attitudes towards immigrants before and after terrorist attacks.

To do so, we analyze the effect of terrorist attacks on posts written in online media and the citizen responses to attitude questions in large-scale surveys. We trace the public discourse by analyzing posts written on YouTube and Facebook using text mining and evaluate attitudes in responses to the European Social Survey using statistical methods for identifying causal relationships. Combining these online and offline sources will provide us with unique insights into how these attacks are perceived in both the public and the private sphere.

IPODA (Immigration, Public Opinion, and Crime in the Digital Age)  workshop explores how social scientists can integrate insights from online data sources (e.g., social media) with traditional methods such as surveys and qualitative interviews to study public opinion and political discourse concerning immigration and crime. Researchers using both types of sources to will come together to discuss and overcome methodological and conceptual divides and discuss challenges of studying public and political discourse.  The hosts hope to encourage collaborations that combine insights from conventional and digital approaches. The workshop features seven in-depth invited talks and keynotes by Dr. Christian Czymara and Dr. Isabel van der Vegt. It is hosted by Christof Nägel, Ana Macanovic, Max Pickartz, and Mark Wittek.