European migration and border control has occupied a prominent spot on the European political agenda. The news media present the topic in a polarized fashion and reports conflicting viewpoints on how the European Union (EU) and national governments should address the issue. We argue that this conflict in news messages can have a polarizing effect on public perceptions regarding the EU’s performance on this topic, and that this effect can be moderated by the valence of news messages. A two-wave online panel survey experiment was conducted on a representative sample of the Dutch population (n = 376). The results indicate that conflict reinforces and thus polarizes policy attitudes, whereas a message’s valence can change people’s attitudes, which reduces the attitudinal gap. The implications of these findings concerning European border control and migration are discussed in the final section of this paper.

中文翻译：

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冲突会撕裂我们吗？冲突和有价媒体信息对欧盟移民和边境管制两极分化态度的影响

欧洲移民和边境管制在欧洲政治议程上占据了重要位置。新闻媒体以两极分化的方式呈现这个话题，并报道了关于欧盟 (EU) 和各国政府应如何解决这个问题的相互矛盾的观点。我们认为，新闻消息中的这种冲突会对公众对欧盟在该主题上的表现的看法产生两极分化的影响，并且这种影响可以通过新闻消息的效价来缓和。对荷兰人口的代表性样本（n = 376）进行了两波在线小组调查实验。结果表明，冲突强化并因此极化政策态度，而信息的效价可以改变人们的态度，从而缩小态度差距。