Why the media matter after all: A response to Pauwels Rens Vliegenthart * , Hajo G. Boomgaarden Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam, Netherlands article info Article history: Received 20 May 2010 Received in revised form 12 August 2010 Accepted 12 August 2010 Keywords: Response Anti-Immigrant parties Media abstract This is a response to Pauwels’ critique of our 2007 Electoral Studies article about the relationship between media content and anti-immigrant party support. We argue here, that Pauwels’ criticism falls short in three respects: (1) it is based on a selective presen- tation of our and others’ arguments; (2) it fails to distinguish between cross-sectional and longitudinal explanations of anti-immigrant party support; and (3) it presents an overly simplified re-analysis which fails to take into account the dynamic properties of the time- series. Certainly, Pauwels’ article contains some interesting suggestions for future research, but his assessment offers no strong evidence for a different interpretation of the rela- tionship between media and anti-immigrant party support than the one given in our original article. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In his recent contribution “Reassessing conceptualiza- tion, data and causality: A critique of Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart’s study on the relationship between media and the rise of anti-immigrant parties” (Electoral Studies, 29 (2)), Pauwels (2010) fundamentally challenged the main findings of our 2007 investigation into the impact of news media on anti-immigrant party support (Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart, 2007). Pauwels critically assesses the way we conceptualize anti-immigrant party support, the oper- ationalization of our dependent and independent variables, and our empirical analyses. In his article, Pauwels outlines a number of alleged flaws in our research, leading him to the conclusion that, contrary to our central claim, there is no relationship between media content and anti-immi- grant party support. We hereby take the opportunity to respond to Pauwels’ critical reading. While we accept that his elaborate critique contains several valuable points which, in general, should be taken into account in this type of analysis, and which we will certainly benefit from in our future work, we believe that his conclusion is overstated. Indeed, as we will discuss and demonstrate below, many of Pauwels’ criticisms are invalid and can be easily countered. His arguments do not fundamentally alter the main conclusions of our article. Therefore, we maintain that the media do matter after all. Our response is structured around four central argu- ments: the first relates to Pauwels’ selective reading of our own work and other relevant publications; the second considers the difference between cross-sectional and time- series explanations of anti-immigrant party support; the third deals with Pauwels’ re-analysis of our data, (particu- larly the importance of the notion of non-stationarity); and our final argument relates to the solutions Pauwels offers and how they need to be evaluated. 2. Selective presentation of arguments There are several examples where Pauwels’ argumen- tation does not do justice to what we write in our article or elsewhere. His selective presentation of our arguments leads to conclusions which only tell part of the story, or which are even simply incorrect. Our arguments are selectively presented on at least three different occasions, and we also note several instances where the same applies * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: R.Vliegenthart@uva.nl (R. Vliegenthart), H.Boom- gaarden@uva.nl (H.G. Boomgaarden). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Electoral Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud 0261-3794/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2010.08.001 Electoral Studies 29 (2010) 719–723