# **1 Introduction**

Migration is one of the most politically polarizing issues in advanced countries. This is reflected in the way migration and its effects are described in the news. While some studies look at how migration-related news influences public opinion and votes in destination countries,<sup>1</sup> little is known about the effect of changes in the sentiment of migration-related news in destination countries on _en route_ migrants and their migration choices. Investigating this matter is important to better understand the impact of the increasing use of an aggressive tone by populist leaders trying to discourage migrants from seeking entry into Europe or the US.<sup>2</sup> This paper studies how changes in the sentiment of migration-related news published in migrants’ preferred destination countries affect migrants’ movements within Libya and the timing of their journey to these countries. Libya is the country with the largest number of international migrants in all of North Africa and the major gateway from Africa to Europe.<sup>3</sup> By showing to what extent changes in the news sentiment in destination countries impact the choices of migrants in Libya, we contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of the movements along the most important irregular migration route to Europe.

Our analysis combines two main data sources. First, we use data on migrants located in Libya during the period 2017-2020 collected by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Even though some migrants plan to remain in the country, for most of them Libya is a transit country towards their final destination. While in Libya, migrants often stay for long periods in the same location, live in rented houses, and have an (informal) job (IOM, 2018a). During their stay in the country, migrants often move across locations several times, using different internal routes according to their nationality (Di Maio et al., 2023). To study migrants’ movements within Libya, we use geo-localized monthly data collected by the IOM in 167 Flow Monitoring Points (FMPs) in Libya. FMPs are located at important points of permanence and transit for migrants. For each FMP, we have information on the country of origin of migrants located in the area, their destination countries, and their length of stay at the FMP. Second, we use data from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone project (GDELT)<sup>4</sup> to identify all the news articles related to migration published in any of the destination countries of the migrants located in all the FMPs in Libya. Importantly, GDELT provides a variable measuring the sentiment of each news article, allowing us to construct, for each FMP in each month, a measure of the average tone of all migration-related news articles published in the destination countries of migrants located near the FMP.

Our main result shows that a reduction in the measure of the sentiment of migration-related news articles published in destination countries increases the share of migrants remaining in their current location in Libya for a long period. The characteristics of migration flows in Libya

> 1See for instance, Benesch et al. (2019); Meltzer et al. (2021); Couttenier et al. (2023); Djourelova (2023).

> 2This is the case of the message broadcasted by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni on September 16 2023, `https: //youtu.be/gFrSJyF7xfU?feature=shared` or that by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis `https://www.foxnews.com/ politics/desantis-warns-migrants-bused-texas-dc-florida-do-not-come`

> 3One important reason why Libya is the preferred transit country to Europe is the lack of border and internal controls, which has characterized the country since the beginning of the Civil War in 2011 (UNHCR, 2019b). 4 GDELT represents a rich source of information to study news coverage of migration events. The database registers events worldwide by collecting all online news released every 15 minutes, and categorizing each news item by location, subject, and sentiment, among other things.

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