which that country is a preferred destination among migrants in Libya. Column 2 shows that this result is confirmed also when we use a Spatial Lag Model (SLM) to account for the fact that a lower preference for country _d_ may be mechanically correlated with a higher preference for _d_ ’s close-by countries.<sup>34</sup> Finally, column 3 shows that the results still hold when controlling for economic conditions in the destination country.

A more negative tone of the news in the preferred destination induces migrants to switch to another country. One important related question is whether this substitution occurs between European and non-European destination countries. This seems not to be the case. To begin with, Figure A7 shows no correlation between the tone of the news in European destination countries and the number of FMPs registering an increase in non-European countries as preferred destinations in the following period. This is also confirmed by results in Table A4 showing that there is no correlation between the change (or the difference) between month _m_ and _m_ + 1 in the number of returnee countries which are the preferred destinations of migrants in FMP _i_ and our main explanatory variable, i.e., the tone of the news in the destination countries of migrants located in FMP _i_ in the previous period. Taken together, these results show that a more negative tone of the news in European destination countries is not associated with an increase in returnee countries among the most preferred destinations for migrants in the next period. We interpret these findings as suggesting that a worsening tone of the news - while it induces a substitution across European destinations - does not make migrants return to their country of origin.

# **7 Concluding remarks**

This paper provides evidence that migrants’ movements in Libya and the timing of their journey towards their destination countries are influenced by changes in the news sentiment of migration-related articles in these same countries. Importantly, we document that these effects are significant only for some groups of migrants and under specific conditions, indicating an overall limited effect of a more negative tone of the news on migrants’ movements towards destination countries.

Relying on IOM data providing information on migrants located in 167 FMP in Libya for the period 2017-2020, we show that a more negative tone of migration-related news articles published in migrants’ destination countries increases their length of stay in Libya, slowing down their migration journey. To validate our findings, we provide evidence that the effect is significant only for migrants located in areas where it is more likely that they have internet access and that our results are not due to reverse causality. Our heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is significant only for migrants coming from West African countries and located in the Western part of the country. Moreover, a worsening tone of the news has no effect in periods during which most of migration-related news articles have a negative tone or the economic conditions in destination countries are very good. Taken together, these results indicate that the effect of changes in news sentiment on migrants’ decisions is significant when, where, and for whom we expect it to be so. Yet, they also suggest a limited impact on overall migration movements.

> 34The negative and significant _ρ_ indicates that this is the case: an increase in the likelihood that _d_ is a preferred country corresponds to a reduction in the preference for _another_ country (for details, see Appendix D).

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