of changes in the sentiment news in destination countries on migrants’ movement choices in Libya. To this end, we modify our baseline specification by replacing our main explanatory variable with a set of five variables, each measuring the tone of (migration-related) news articles referring to one specific topic, and one variable measuring the tone of the news of all the other (migration-related) news articles not covering these five topics. The five specific topics are: 1) discrimination; 2) sea incidents; 3) economic conditions; 4) crime; 5) (migration-related) government announcements. Results indicate that among all these topics, the only one with a statistically significant effect is _discrimination_ : a more negative tone in migration-related news articles on discrimination episodes induces migrants to postpone the next step in their migration journey and stay longer in their current location. Changes in the tone of news articles focusing on all the other topics, including sea incidents or (migration-related) government announcements, do not seem to have an effect. One possible interpretation of this finding is that the sentiment of news articles on discrimination episodes predicts the attitude of the local population in the destination country towards migration and the level of difficulty that migrants may encounter in terms of job opportunities, access to housing, and social integration (World Bank, 2023; Aksoy et al., 2023).<sup>30</sup> A more negative tone of the news indicates that these conditions at destination may be getting worse and that integration is becoming more difficult, reducing the incentive for the individual to make the next step in the migration journey.<sup>31</sup>

**Validation** To corroborate these results, we conduct three validation exercises. First, we show that the effect of tone of the news is significant only in FMPs located in areas in which it is more likely that migrants have access to the Internet. Second, we conduct two different placebo tests showing that our results are not spurious. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that our results are unlikely to be driven by reverse causality.

**Internet access** Our finding that migrants’ movement choices in Libya are influenced by the tone of news published in their preferred destination countries rests on the idea that migrants are able to access and read the news. While we do not have information on mobile ownership nor on individual-level Internet usage, Table 2 provides suggestive evidence that the tone of the news affects only migrants who are more likely to be able to access them. Column 1 shows that the effect of the tone of the news in the destination countries increases with the level of economic activity around the FMP (as proxied by night lights). As long as economic activity positively correlates with Internet access, these results indicate that the effect is stronger in areas where migrants are more likely to read the news and to use it to take their decisions. Columns 2 and 3 offer additional support to this interpretation by using information on internet coverage in Libya. Results show that the effect of the tone of the news is significant only where there is Internet coverage and there is a high-speed connection. The fact that the changes in the tone of the news have an effect only in the locations where migrants are more likely to actually access

> 30Aksoy et al. (2023) show that attitudes towards migrants (proxied by a “sentiment index” built using Twitter data) are as important as local unemployment rates in shaping refugees’ integration outcomes in Germany.

> 31Note that for our argument to be valid, migrants do not need to be able to read the news articles (e.g., to know the language of the destination country) nor to actually read them. It is enough to assume that someone in contact with the migrants can read the news articles published in the destination country and then communicate to them the sentiment of the news articles.

12