The study is available for free here, via. cambridge.org:

FOOS, F., & BISCHOF, D. (2022). Tabloid Media Campaigns and Public Opinion: Quasi-Experimental Evidence on Euroscepticism in England

Abstract:

Whether powerful media outlets have effects on public opinion has been at the heart of theoretical and empirical discussions about the media’s role in political life. Yet, the effects of media campaigns are difficult to study because citizens self-select into media consumption. Using a quasi-experiment—the 30-year boycott of the most important Eurosceptic tabloid newspaper, The Sun, in Merseyside caused by the Hillsborough soccer disaster—we identify the effects of The Sun boycott on attitudes toward leaving the EU. Difference-in-differences designs using public opinion data spanning three decades, supplemented by referendum results, show that the boycott caused EU attitudes to become more positive in treated areas. This effect is driven by cohorts socialized under the boycott and by working-class voters who stopped reading The Sun. Our findings have implications for our understanding of public opinion, media influence, and ways to counter such influence in contemporary democracies.

There’s also a discussion with the authors here:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2023/03/23/conversations-with-authors-tabloid-media-campaigns-and-public-opinion/

  • kindenough@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I am Dutch and endorse this above statement. Also Kelvin MacKenzie…what a piece of shit he is, scum of the earth.

    All I did wrong there was tell the truth. There was a surge of Liverpool fans who had been drinking and that is what caused the disaster. The only thing different we did was put it under the headline “The Truth”. I went on The World at One the next day and apologised. I only did that because Rupert Murdoch told me to. I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now because we told the truth.