Domestication of remote threats: From vicarious learning of foreign events to local intergroup relations

The current study investigated how media exposure to a distant outgroup – asylum seekers in the European Union (EUAS) – may be associated with the transference of geographically distant foreign threats via Israeli media to Israeli local minorities. The study was based on an online survey of 1039 Israeli Jews. We found positive associations between frequency of exposure to negative EUAS media content and physical and symbolic threats domesticated from foreign outgroups to the local ground. Frequent exposure to negative EUAS media content was associated with worse attitudes toward asylum seekers in Israel. Thus, the media framing of remote groups and events can have important, long-lasting local consequences, including, most obviously, social and political implications.