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Existing studies demonstrate that threat perceptions matter for immigration attitudes. However, while these perceptions are potentially sensitive to information about immigrants' impacts, questions remain about whether inserting such information into public debates changes attitudes and policy preferences—especially on polarizing issues like immigration. Moreover, few studies have considered messages featuring the type of nonphotorealistic visual elements that increasingly appear in media. Using a survey experiment fielded in the United Kingdom, we examined whether evidence about European Union immigrants' modestly positive economic impacts on the United Kingdom—presented either as text, with visualizations, or as an animated film—changed immigration attitudes and policy preferences. Although visual elements did not have an effect over and above text, all the informational treatments moved attitudes and preferences in positive directions, even among Leave voters. Our study brings together research on immigration public opinion and visual media and has implications for policymaking and journalism practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do governments visually communicate policies, and what does this reveal about actors' political objectives? Governments strategically narrate their priorities, yet few studies examine this process through visual modes. We contribute to theoretical and empirical understanding in policy studies by focusing on the UK government's COVID-19 response through its daily press briefings during the first wave of 2020. Combining quantitative changepoint and content analysis with qualitative discourse analysis, we examine all 79 sets of slides when briefings occurred. We identify a reactive phase focused on communicating knowledge about the pandemic in a boundedly rational manner, and a proactive phase that created new policy-based narratives of the pandemic. Besides contributing to emerging pandemic-related policy scholarship, we argue that conceiving these visualizations as visual narrative assemblages is relevant more broadly because it shifts attention to the interaction and interdependence of multiple visualizations as they enable policymakers to perform their authority to govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What visual features characterize online migration data visualizations, and what do they suggest for the politics of representing migration and informing public attitudes? Audiences increasingly encounter quantitative information through visualization, especially in digital environments. Yet visualizations have political dimensions that manifest themselves through "conventions," or shared symbols and practices conveying meaning. Using content analysis, I identify patterns of representation in a sample of 277 migration data visualizations scraped from Google Images. I find evidence of several conventions including appeals to objectivity and traceability as well as perspectives and units of analysis centered on states—particularly higher income migrant destinations. Then, by locating my analysis within the growing field of digital migration studies, I argue these conventions potentially shape public attitudes and understandings about migrants, and contribute to broader migration politics involving categorization and quantification that have relevance both on- and off-line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]