Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes - Research Collection
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ETH Library Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes Journal Article Author(s): Alrababa’h, Ala’; Marble, Wwilliam; Mousa, Salma; Siegel, Alexandra A. Publication date: 2021-11 Permanent link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000524343 Rights / license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Originally published in: American Political Science Review 115(4), https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055421000423 This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information, please consult the Terms of use.
American Political Science Review (2021) 115, 4, 1111–1128
doi:10.1017/S0003055421000423 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political
Science Association. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of
Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes
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ALA’ ALRABABA’H Stanford University
WILLIAM MARBLE Stanford University
SALMA MOUSA Yale University
ALEXANDRA A. SIEGEL University of Colorado Boulder
C
an exposure to celebrities from stigmatized groups reduce prejudice? To address this question, we
study the case of Mohamed Salah, a visibly Muslim, elite soccer player. Using data on hate crime
reports throughout England and 15 million tweets from British soccer fans, we find that after Salah
joined Liverpool F.C., hate crimes in the Liverpool area dropped by 16% compared with a synthetic
control, and Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other
top-flight clubs. An original survey experiment suggests that the salience of Salah’s Muslim identity
enabled positive feelings toward Salah to generalize to Muslims more broadly. Our findings provide
support for the parasocial contact hypothesis—indicating that positive exposure to out-group celebrities
can spark real-world behavioral changes in prejudice.
I
n February 2018, fans of one of England’s most In the first three seasons that Salah played for
storied soccer clubs, Liverpool F.C., celebrated a Liverpool F.C., the club was extraordinarily successful,
decisive victory in soccer’s most elite league. A 5-0 appearing in consecutive U.E.F.A. Champion’s League
win over F.C. Porto in the U.E.F.A. Champions League finals and taking the title in 2019. The club was similarly
previewed an excellent season that saw Liverpool F.C. successful in the domestic league, winning the English
advance to the final. Mohamed Salah, a young Egyp- Premier League for the first time in club history in 2020,
tian striker, was key to the club’s success. After the with Salah being crowned the league’s top goal scorer
victory, fans chanted: two years in a row.
Salah is noteworthy not only for his skill on the soccer
If he scores another few field, but also for his conspicuous Islamic identity—
Then I’ll be Muslim, too. which was arguably unprecedented in elite soccer.
If he’s good enough for you, European fans were not accustomed to seeing players
He’s good enough for me. prostrate to perform a Muslim prayer (sujood) after
Sitting in a mosque, scoring goals, for example. His popularity fueled media
That’s where I wanna be. speculation that Salah’s Muslim identity might be
reducing Islamophobia among fans (The National
Fans created more homespun chants as Liverpool 2018; Thomas 2018).1 Some pundits argued that Salah
F.C. continued their successful season: portrayed “favorable images of Muslims, helping to
reduce stereotypes and break down barriers within
Mohamed Salah communities” (Monks 2018). Others disagreed. Des-
A gift from Allah. pite the fact that “everyone loves a winner,” there was
He’s always scoring, still no systematic evidence that Salah’s fame could “in
It’s almost boring. any way decrease the mainstream Islamophobia in
British culture” (Al-Sayyad 2018). Beyond anecdotes,
So please don’t take
little is known about whether Salah has had a system-
Mohamed away.
atic influence on Islamophobia.
The possibility that exposure to Salah reduced
Ala’ Alrababa’h , Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Islamophobia supports the parasocial contact hypoth-
Science, Stanford University, and Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford esis (Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes 2005)—the idea
University and ETH Zurich, alaa@stanford.edu. that mediated contact with celebrities or characters
William Marble , Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political from out-groups has the potential to reduce prejudice
Science, Stanford University, wpmarble@stanford.edu. toward the out-group as a whole. This proposed exten-
Salma Mousa , Assistant Professor, Department of Political
Science, Yale University, sm3285@yale.edu.
sion to Allport’s (1954) classic contact hypothesis has
Alexandra A. Siegel , Assistant Professor, Department of Political received support in observational studies as well as
Science, University of Colorado Boulder, and Immigration Policy
Lab, Stanford University and ETH Zurich, alexandra.siegel@color-
ado.edu. 1
We adopt a relatively expansive definition of Islamophobia: fear,
Received: July 16, 2019; revised: March 31, 2021; accepted: May 03, hatred, or dislike of Islam or Muslims, as well as anti-Muslim preju-
2021. First published online: June 07, 2021. dicial attitudes or behaviors more generally (Sheridan 2006).
1111Ala’ Alrababa’h et al.
laboratory- and survey-based experiments, but not in This study contributes to our understanding of para-
naturalistic settings with causal purchase. In this social contact in four primary ways. First, we study
paper, we provide a real-world test of the parasocial naturally occurring exposure to a celebrity—rather than
contact hypothesis. We test the proposition that Sal- exposure induced in a laboratory or survey experiment—
ah’s meteoric rise reduced anti-Muslim attitudes and providing strong claims to external validity. Second, we
behaviors among Liverpool F.C. fans. We test this examine an unexpected and plausibly exogenous
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hypothesis using three complementary research increase in exposure to a celebrity from a minority group,
designs: an analysis of hate crimes in England, an allowing us to estimate plausible counterfactuals. This
analysis of anti-Muslim tweets among U.K. soccer research design gives us causal purchase beyond what is
fans, and an original survey experiment. typically attainable in observational studies of parasocial
First, we draw on hate crime data from 25 police contact or the contact hypothesis more generally, where
departments in England between 2015 and 2018. We selection bias (more tolerant individuals selecting into
employ a variant of the synthetic control method to intergroup contact) poses a threat to inference. Third, we
generate a counterfactual hate crime rate for the study behavioral outcomes, including hate crimes and
Merseyside police force—which covers the city of Liv- hate speech, that are of direct relevance for policy.
erpool—after Salah signed with Liverpool F.C. We find Finally, we buttress our observational results with an
that Merseyside experienced a 16% lower hate crime original survey experiment. This lends further credence
rate after Salah was signed relative to the expected rate to our causal estimates and tests a critical assumption
had he not been signed. Second, we analyze 15 million needed for parasocial contact with one individual to
tweets produced by followers of prominent soccer clubs reduce prejudice toward an entire group: the salience
in the English Premier League. Using the same syn- of group identity.
thetic control method as in our hate crime analysis, we The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In the
find that the proportion of anti-Muslim tweets pro- next section, we draw on the parasocial contact litera-
duced by Liverpool F.C. fans after Salah joined was ture to motivate our empirical hypotheses. Next, we
about half of the expected rate had he not joined the provide a brief discussion of Islamophobia in the
club—3.8% versus 7.3% of tweets related to Muslims. U.K. Then, we present our analysis of hate crime data
Finally, we implement a survey experiment among in England, which is followed by an analysis of tweets
8,060 Liverpool F.C. fans to explicitly test how expos- produced by Twitter followers of English Premier
ure to Salah might lead to generalized tolerance toward League clubs. After a brief discussion of robustness
Muslims. In line with the parasocial contact hypothesis, and generalizability, we describe our original survey
our results suggest that the salience of Salah’s Muslim experiment testing the proposition that the salience of
identity reduced prejudice toward Muslims writ large. Salah’s identity may play a key role in reducing preju-
Priming respondents with information about Salah’s dice toward Muslims more generally. In the discussion
religious practices boosted the belief that Islam is section, we interpret the results and address their gen-
compatible with British values by around 5 percentage eralizability before concluding the paper.
points, compared to the baseline rate of 18% among the
control group. These findings suggest that positive
exposure to out-group celebrities, especially when THE PARASOCIAL CONTACT HYPOTHESIS
these celebrities’ minority group membership is highly
salient, can reduce prejudice. A rich literature documents the relationship between
This “Salah effect” is likely not unique to Salah. various forms of intergroup contact and prejudice. The
Celebrities with role model-like qualities have long contact hypothesis posits that personal contact across
been thought to shape social attitudes. When Jackie social lines can reduce prejudice if that contact is
Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, his positive, endorsed by communal authorities, egalitar-
“efforts were a monumental step in the civil-rights ian, and involves cooperating to achieve a common goal
revolution in America … [His] accomplishments (Allport 1954). Such contact has been found to reduce
allowed black and white Americans to be more respect- prejudice by alleviating intergroup anxieties, inducing
ful and open to one another,” according to historian empathy, highlighting commonalities, and forging
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Williams and Sielski friendships, among other social, emotional, and cogni-
2004, 212). British-Bangladeshi Nadiyah Hussain, the tive pathways (Pettigrew 1998; Pettigrew and Tropp
headscarf-clad winner of the most watched program on 2006). Experimental evidence from myriad contexts
British television, The Great British Bake-Off, was and countries establishes the effectiveness of positive
credited with doing “more for British-Muslim relations contact in improving intergroup relations (Barnhardt
than 10 years of government policy” after her 2015 win 2009; Burns, Corno, and La Ferrara 2015; Carrell,
(Wiseman 2018). The 2018 reboot of Queer Eye for the Hoekstra, and West 2015; Lowe 2017; Rao 2019).
Straight Guy has similarly been lauded as a “tool for Meta-analyses subsequently conclude that positive
helping people unlearn” homophobia (Reyes 2018). contact “typically reduces prejudice” (Paluck, Green,
Exposure to celebrities through mass media is one and Green 2019; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006).
of the most common forms of intergroup contact, While intergroup contact presents a promising way
making parasocial contact an important but under- to foster tolerance, its potential may be limited by a lack
studied frontier of prejudice reduction research of opportunities for such contact. Residential and occu-
(Park 2012). pational segregation, intergroup anxiety, or the small
1112Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice?
size of some minority groups can pose social, economic, the world’s most-watched annual sporting event, the
and psychological barriers to meaningful intergroup U.E.F.A. Champions League Final, before leading
contact (Enos 2017; Joyce and Harwood 2014; Ortiz the Egyptian national side to the F.I.F.A. World Cup
and Harwood 2007). This has led scholars, including the for the first time in three decades one month later. His
father of the contact hypothesis, to suggest that mass remarkable breakout season earned him a nomination
media may play an important role in shaping and for the English Premier League’s Player of the Year
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sustaining prejudice (Allport 1954). and the coveted F.I.F.A. Puskás Prize for Goal of the
Building on this insight, Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes Year, satisfying the positive exposure criterion of para-
(2005) propose the “parasocial contact hypothesis” as an social contact.
analogue of the classic contact hypothesis. This hypoth- Finally, Salah’s Muslim identity is highly salient. His
esis stipulates that mediated contact with members of first name is recognizably Muslim, he prostrates in
minority groups has the potential to reduce prejudice prayer after scoring a goal, and points his index finger
toward that group. Numerous observational and experi- to the sky while reciting the shahada, the Muslim
mental laboratory studies document support for the profession of faith. Die-hard fans will also know that
parasocial contact hypothesis. While much of this litera- Salah’s daughter, Makka, is named after Islam’s most
ture has focused on the role of negative media coverage sacred site, and his veiled wife can often be seen
in exacerbating prejudice (Ramasubramanian 2013), cheering him on from the sidelines. Salah is distinctive
exposure to fictional television characters and celebrities in this way: Europe has seen many excellent players of
has also been shown to reduce racial prejudice, religious Muslim heritage, but most are dissociated from Islam in
prejudice, prejudice based on gender or sexual orienta- the minds of fans because of their lack of public piety.
tion, and prejudice against individuals with disabilities By contrast, fan chants centered on Salah refer to
and mental health disorders (Abrams, McGaughey, and mosques, Muslims, and Allah while the Liverpool
Haghighat 2018; Bond 2020; Miller et al. 2020; Park F.C. coach, Jürgen Klopp, has also pointed to Salah’s
2012; Wong, Lookadoo, and Nisbett 2017). religiosity as an integral part of his identity (Bascombe
Like face-to-face contact, the quality and quantity of 2019). Given that Salah meets the three hypothesized
parasocial contact determines the degree to which it criteria for parasocial contact to reduce prejudice—
reduces prejudice. While the conditions under which positivity, repeated exposure, and salient out-group
parasocial contact might be successful have yet to be identity—he provides an ideal case to test the paraso-
systematically tested, Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes cial contact hypothesis.
(2005) propose that parasocial contact should involve
repeated exposure to individuals who are both likable
and clearly identifiable as members of an out-group. CONTEXT: ISLAMOPHOBIA IN THE U.K.
Studies of traditional intergroup contact similarly high-
light the importance of repeated exposure (Dovidio The British Empire has historically perpetuated racism
et al. 2017), a positive experience (Aberson 2015; to justify the continued occupation of foreign territor-
Barlow et al. 2012; Paolini, Harwood, and Rubin ies. South Asians and Afro-Caribbeans have subse-
2010), and a salient out-group identity (Al Ramiah quently endured a legacy of discriminatory policies
and Hewstone 2013). When these conditions are met, and practices, including waves of violence by far-right,
individuals appear to use the same cognitive processes anti-immigrant groups. The government passed the
underpinning prejudice reduction during parasocial Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1976, and self-
contact—for example, in developing “relationships” reported racist attitudes declined between the 1980s
with television characters—as they do in real-world and 2001 (BBC News 2014). However, the terrorist
intergroup contact (Park 2012). attacks on September 11, 2001, and July 7, 2005,
For Liverpool F.C. fans during the study period, reinvigorated discrimination against visible minorities,
exposure to Salah fulfills these three criteria. First, particularly Muslims. Suspicion toward Muslims mani-
fans have had sustained contact with Salah over time. fested in the behavior of the British state, media cover-
Salah was a regular starter for Liverpool F.C.’s games age of Muslims, and public attitudes toward Islam.
within the English Premier League, which entails Scholars have argued that British surveillance of Mus-
38 weeks of game play every season in addition to lims following terrorist attacks was driven in large part
appearances in other domestic and international tour- by an irrational fear of Muslims and “informed by the
naments. Off the field, Salah was active on social framing of the terror threat as an Islamic threat, which
media and appeared in high-profile advertisements casts all Muslims as potential terrorists that need to be
for corporations like Pepsi, Adidas, and Vodafone. monitored and categorised” (Qurashi 2018, 11). The
Appearances in sporting events, sports television, and sweeping skepticism toward Muslims ingrained in the
commercials are all known to facilitate parasocial British state bureaucracy was such that even Christians
relationships between fans and celebrity athletes from Muslim-majority countries faced additional bar-
(Brown and Basil 1995). riers during immigration and asylum processes
Second, with Salah enjoying tremendous success at (Madziva 2018).
the individual, club, and national levels during the study The British media has also played a role in perpetu-
period, Salah was portrayed positively in the media ating a fear of Muslims and Islam. For instance, in
and received a great deal of positive attention from response to a question by the Evening Standard about
fans and teammates. In May 2018, he carried his club to the effect of Islam on life in London, a former BBC
1113Ala’ Alrababa’h et al.
Today program editor asserted that “Islam is masochis- High levels of prejudice compound other disadvan-
tic, homophobic and a totalitarian regime. It is a tages faced by British Muslims. Data from the 2014
fascistic, bigoted and medieval religion” (Milly and Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force survey
Khiabany 2010, 86). A columnist for The Daily Mail show that Muslim men are up to 76% less likely to be
characterized the veil worn by some Muslim women as employed, and Muslim women up to six times less
an “Islamist symbol which plays a role analogous to likely, than their white, non-Muslim counterparts
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the use of the swastika by Nazism” (Milly and (Khattab and Johnston 2015). A government report
Khiabany 2010, 87). Meanwhile, The Daily Express concluding that “Muslims experience the greatest eco-
published a column that stated, “Make no mistake, nomic disadvantages of any group in U.K. society”
the proliferation of the burka-wearing is a direct attributed part of this disadvantage to discrimination
threat to the British way of life and in all too many in the workplace (Stevenson et al. 2017). Discrimin-
instances is intended to be just that” (Milly and ation also extends beyond the labor market. Over a
Khiabany 2010, 87). A study of the print news media quarter of British Pakistanis feel discriminated against
between 2000 and 2008 found that 36% of stories on the housing market compared with just 1% of white
about British Muslims overall are related to terrorism, non-Muslim Britons, according to a 2013 survey, and
with 32% of all stories about Muslims in 2008 centered Muslims consistently report poorer health outcomes
on the religious and cultural differences between relative to other religious groups (Elahi and Khan
Islam and British values (Moore, Mason, and Lewis 2017; McLeod 2013). Prejudice against Muslims also
2008). The rise of negative portrayals of Muslims in seems to beget violence. While race or ethnicity already
mainstream media has been accompanied by an motivated 82% of hate crimes in England and Wales in
increase in anti-Muslim cyber bullying, cyber harass- 2012 (Home Office 2012), reported abuse against Mus-
ment, cyber incitement, and threats of offline violence lims nearly doubled between 2015 and 2017 according
(Awan and Zempi 2016). to one watch group (Tell Mama 2017).
Negative attitudes toward Islam are similarly How might parasocial contact operate in the British
reflected in public opinion data. Figure 1 summarizes context? Prior work shows that the macropolitical
polling data, from YouGov, which shows a steady environment and the tone of media coverage shape
increase in the belief that “there is a fundamental clash the outcomes of intergroup encounters, but that these
between Islam and the values of British society” from effects are highly contextual. Hopkins (2010) finds that
2015 to 2017. Despite a slight dip in 2017, over half of hostile national rhetoric, especially when combined
respondents continued to affirm this sentiment in 2018, with local demographic change, increases individual
signaling the persistence of skepticism toward Islam in and political hostility toward ethnic out-groups. In
the U.K. contrast, Sønderskov, Mannemar, and Thomsen
FIGURE 1. Attitudes toward Islam in the British Public between 2015 and 2018
60%
Percent saying Islam clashes w/ British values
55%
50%
45%
40%
2015 2016 2017 2018
Note: Source: The YouGov-Cambridge Center. The vertical axis is the percentage of survey respondents stating that “there is a
fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society.” Points are weighted averages within survey waves; the trend line is a
GAM fit to all 34,409 survey respondents using survey weights.
1114Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice?
(2015) show that hostile national rhetoric can reduce if its response to our request was sufficient to calculate
prejudice among individuals with friends and cowor- the total number of hate crimes reported in the juris-
kers from out-groups, further suggesting differential diction for each month. We obtained usable data from
effects of national climates on prejudice. 25 police jurisdictions out of the 39 contacted for a total
Ex ante, it is not clear how intergroup contact might of 936 police force-month observations.
operate in the city of Liverpool. On one hand, Liverpool Our main outcome is an annualized hate crime rate
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is less ethnically diverse than the rest of England (86.2% per thousand residents. For instance, a police jurisdic-
white vs. the national average of 81.4%) and is located in tion with a population of 100,000 that experiences 10 hate
one of the top five police jurisdictions for hate crimes crimes in a given month has an annual hate crime rate
(Liverpool City Council 2011). On the other hand, of (10 / 100,000) 1,000 12 = 1.2 hate crimes per
Liverpudlians have long boycotted The Sun, one of the thousand residents in that month.3 The dependent vari-
most influential right-wing tabloids, and therefore have able ranges from 0 to a maximum of 4.342, with a mean
more liberal attitudes on some political issues (Foos and of 0.951 and standard deviation of 0.767.
Bischof 2018). Further complicating our expectations, We consider the Merseyside police force—which
the study period coincides with a Brexit process fueled covers Liverpool—to be treated after Salah’s official
by anti-immigrant sentiment (Goodwin and Milazzo signing in June 2017.4 When Salah joined, his transfer
2017), but one that was ultimately rejected by 58.2% fee constituted a club record, stoking interest in the
of Liverpool residents (BBC 2016). The complex inter- player among the club’s fans and suggesting that his
action of individual, local, and national forces thus leaves signing date is an appropriate choice for the start of the
us with ambiguous expectations with respect to the treatment.5 We present descriptive statistics and fur-
moderating effect of the political climate on intergroup ther discussion of the data in Appendix A.1.
contact in Liverpool during the study period. Our goal is to estimate how hate crimes in Mersey-
side changed after Salah joined Liverpool F.C. relative
to what would have happened had he not joined the
team. This task requires estimating a counterfactual
ANALYSIS OF HATE CRIMES IN THE U.K. quantity: the trajectory of hate crimes in Merseyside
had Salah not joined Liverpool F.C. To construct such a
We begin our empirical analysis with a hard test of the
counterfactual, we use the pretreatment data from
parasocial contact hypothesis: an analysis of hate
Merseyside and the control group data. Our main
crimes in the U.K. If Salah’s signing decreased the
analysis uses the matrix completion method of Athey
general public’s tolerance of hate crimes, or changed
et al. (2021), as implemented in the R package gsynth
the underlying beliefs of bigots who commit hate
(Xu and Liu 2018). This method imputes the unob-
crimes, then we would expect to see fewer hate crimes.2
served outcomes in the posttreatment period by first
To test this proposition, we use an event-study analysis
looking for structure in the pretreatment control data
that exploits Salah’s rapid rise to fame. We analyze the
that generates good predictions of the treated unit’s
hate crime rate in the Merseyside police force jurisdic-
outcomes in the pretreatment period. The same struc-
tion after Salah joined Liverpool F.C. and compare this
ture is then applied to the posttreatment periods to
rate with what we would have expected if prior trends
generate estimates of the counterfactual potential out-
had continued. We draw on hate crime statistics from
comes for the treated unit. To obtain an estimate of the
over two dozen police forces in the U.K. to construct a
treatment effect on the treated unit, we simply take the
synthetic control unit for Merseyside. We then com-
difference between the observed outcome for the trea-
pare the actual hate crime rate to the synthetic control
ted unit in the posttreatment period and the imputed
as an estimate of the effect of Salah. We find that hate
counterfactual outcome.6
crimes in Merseyside were significantly lower after
Statistical inference in the setting of a single treated
Salah joined Liverpool F.C. than we would have other-
unit is challenging. Standard methods for computing
wise expected.
standard errors based on asymptotic theory obviously
do not apply. We therefore implement three comple-
Data and Research Design mentary approaches to inference. First, we use the non-
parametric bootstrap, where we repeatedly resample
We gathered data on hate crimes by submitting Free-
dom of Information requests to every police depart- 3
ment in England in April 2018. Police classify an Any other normalization procedure would yield identical results, up
to a multiplicative constant.
incident as a hate crime when they have clear indication 4
Merseyside encompasses both Everton F.C. and Liverpool
that the perpetrator targeted the victim mainly on the F.C. fans. A backlash among Everton fans would dilute any treatment
basis of their religious, racial, sexual, or abilities-based effects for the hate crime analysis, biasing against finding an effect.
5
identity. We include a police jurisdiction in our analysis Appendix Figure A.1 shows that public interest in Salah—as meas-
ured by Google searches in the U.K.—spiked shortly after he was
signed in the summer of 2017 and then began to steadily increase
2
Hate crimes are rare events that are likely to be perpetrated by afterwards through mid-2018.
6
extreme bigots. Hate crimes are also public acts, and as such they are Therefore, if there are T posttreatment periods, we obtain T
likely to be subject to social pressure. A reduction in hate crimes thus treatment effect estimates. In addition, we compute the treatment
requires either that the underlying beliefs of these bigots have effect averaged over the T posttreatment periods as a simple sum-
changed or that hate crimes are less socially acceptable. mary of the treatment effect.
1115Ala’ Alrababa’h et al.
control units and reestimate the model to generate a 2017, and persist through at least April 2018—the last
bootstrap distribution and standard error for the treat- month in our dataset.
ment effect estimator. Second, we conduct a permuta- The bottom plot in Figure 2 shows the estimated
tion test where we reshuffle units’ treatment status to treatment effect for Merseyside, in black, alongside the
generate a null distribution for the treatment effect placebo treatment effect estimates for every other unit,
estimator, analogous to the procedure in Abadie, Dia- in gray.8 This plot shows that the decrease in hate crimes
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mond, and Hainmueller (2010). Third, we conduct a in Merseyside is large relative to the placebo estimates.
placebo test using other types of crime, collected by No placebo unit’s treatment effect estimates are as
the U.K. Home Office, that are unlikely to be affected consistently negative as Merseyside’s. When we average
by changes in anti-Muslim sentiment. If we find that the across posttreatment periods, Merseyside has the largest
effect size for hate crimes is comparable to that for other decrease in hate crimes. Only one placebo unit has a
types of crime, it would suggest that the results are treatment effect estimate that is larger in absolute
capturing a more general decline in crime rather than value—and this is an increase in hate crimes relative to
an effect of Salah. its respective synthetic controls. With these statistics, we
Appendix A provides greater detail on the data, can calculate one-sided and two-sided p-values. There
research design, and methods for the hate crime ana- are 24 possible permutations of the treatment assign-
lysis. It also presents the results of an alternative ment—Merseyside plus 23 placebo units—so the one-
method of estimating the treatment effect—a general- sided p-value is 1 / 24 = 0.042 and the two-sided p-value is
ized difference-in-differences regression with two-way 2 / 24 = 0.083. This result suggests that the decrease in
fixed effects. This approach yields very similar results. hate crimes observed in Merseyside is unusual relative to
changes observed in other police jurisdictions.
The change in hate crimes is consistent with a Salah
Results effect, but it is unclear whether Salah was the cause of the
decline. Instead, it could also be that there was a general
The main results are presented in Figure 2. The top plot
decline in crime in Merseyside that happened to coincide
shows the actual outcome data for Merseyside, along
with Salah’s arrival at Liverpool F.C. If this were the case,
with the imputed counterfactual for Merseyside. The
we might observe a decrease in hate crimes relative to
bottom plot shows the difference between the observed
other police jurisdictions, even if Salah’s arrival at Liver-
and imputed outcomes in all periods for Merseyside
pool F.C. had no direct effect on hate crimes.
and all other permutations of the treatment assign-
The placebo outcome analysis helps to address this
ment.7 In both plots, the shaded region indicates the
concern. If there were a general decline in crime, the
posttreatment period. In the posttreatment period, the
estimated treatment effect on hate crimes would not be
difference between the observed and imputed out-
distinctive relative to the treatment effect on other
comes is the treatment effect estimate.
types of crime. Figure 3 shows the treatment effect
If the matrix completion method is performing well,
estimates for each of 15 different types of crimes—hate
the imputed estimates should closely match the
crimes, plus the 14 types tracked in the U.K. Home
observed outcomes in the pretreatment period.
Office police data. The results show that the decrease
Reassuringly, this is the pattern we see. In the top
in hate crimes is larger than changes observed for other
panel, the two lines in the pretreatment period track
types of crime in Merseyside. Recall that the treatment
each other closely. In the bottom plot, the pretreatment
effect for hate crimes was a 16% decrease relative to the
line is close to 0 in most periods. While it fluctuates at
synthetic control in the posttreatment period. No other
times, there does not appear to be a trending pattern in
crime category saw such a large relative decrease, and
the pretreatment period that would cause concern
only one, “drugs,” had a change that was larger in
about the validity of the treatment effect estimates.
magnitude—and it was an increase in crime by 19.5%.
Moving on to the posttreatment periods, the observed
Thus, the drop in hate crimes after Salah was signed does
levels of hate crime in Merseyside are consistently lower
not appear to be attributable to a general decrease in
than the predicted level from the synthetic control unit.
crimes in Merseyside.
Averaging across all months in the posttreatment period,
Overall, we interpret these results to support the
the difference between the observed outcome and the
hypothesis that Salah’s arrival at Liverpool F.C. caused
synthetic control is −0:275 annualized hate crimes per
a decrease in extreme acts of bigotry. Hate crimes in
1,000 residents. Compared with the counterfactual
Merseyside were lower after Salah was signed than we
imputed average in the posttreatment period, this treat-
would expect given prior hate crime trends and the
ment effect represents a 16% drop in hate crimes. The
trends of other police jurisdictions after Salah was
bootstrap-based standard error for the treatment effect,
signed. This decline was more extreme than we would
averaging over posttreatment periods, is 0.069 and the
expect based on chance alone, and the decrease in hate
central 95% confidence interval is ½−0:401, −0:154:
crimes was more pronounced than the decrease in any
Looking at the estimates month-by-month, the differ-
other crime category. Taken together, the evidence
ences between the observed and imputed outcomes
begin soon after Salah agreed to join Liverpool, in June
8
In implementing this method, we omit the West Yorkshire police
7
That is, each gray line shows the matrix completion results if we force because we only have data for two pretreatment months. In all,
pretend that one of the control units was, in fact, treated. there are 23 placebo units we use for the permutation procedure.
1116Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice?
FIGURE 2. Synthetic Control Results for Hate Crimes Analysis
(a) Observed and imputed outcomes for Merseyside
2.00
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Imputed
1.75
Monthly hate crime rate
1.50
1.25
Observed
1.00
−30 −20 −10 0 10
Months relative to treatment
0.6
Observed − Imputed Hate Crime Rate
0.3
0.0
−0.3
−0.6
−30 −20 −10 0 10
Months relative to treatment
Note: The top panel shows the observed (solid line) and imputed (dashed line) monthly hate crime rates in Merseyside. The bottom panel
shows the difference between the observed and imputed outcomes. In the posttreatment period, this is the estimate of the treatment effect.
The black line shows the estimates obtained for Merseyside, and the gray lines show the estimates obtained when we treat each of the
control units as if it were treated. The fact that the Merseyside estimates are consistently lower than the control group estimates provides
evidence that our treatment effect estimates are unlikely to be due to chance.
points to Salah’s rise in prominence causing a decrease in
hate crimes in Liverpool F.C.’s home county.9 that Muslims make up only 5% of the British population, they are
significantly overrepresented among hate crime victims. Another
objection is that Islamophobia may be underlying some other crime
categories that are used in the placebo tests. While this is a possibility,
9
Some may object to the hate crimes analysis because only about it would bias against our findings, since the trends for all crimes would
39% of hate crimes targeted Muslims (see Appendix A). Considering look more similar to the trend for hate crimes.
1117Ala’ Alrababa’h et al.
FIGURE 3. Synthetic Control Results for All Crime Types in Merseyside
40%
Relative to pre−treatment baseline
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Observed − Imputed
20%
0%
−20%
−40%
−30 −20 −10 0 10
Months relative to treatment
Hate crimes Other crime categories
Note: The black line shows the treatment effect estimate for hate crimes and the gray lines show treatment effect estimates for each of
14 types of crimes defined by the U.K. Home Office. To generate estimates on comparable scales across crime types, the treatment effect
estimates are expressed as a percentage of the pretreatment mean for each crime type. The estimated treatment effect on hate crimes is
consistently more negative than the estimate for any other crime outcome.
ANALYSIS OF U.K. SOCCER FANS’ TWEETS F.C., a smaller team with 1.75 million followers that is
also located in the city of Liverpool. Fans of both clubs
Our analysis of hate crimes in the U.K. provides evi- are nearly identical in terms of demographics: the
dence that Salah joining Liverpool F.C. may have home stadiums are within walking distance of each
decreased hate crimes in Merseyside relative to their other, there are no historic political, religious, or social
expected rates if he had not joined Liverpool differences between their fanbases, and many Liver-
F.C. Although hate crimes are extremely harmful and pudlian families are mixed in their allegiances
consequential, they are quite rare and extreme events. (Borden 2014). Evertonians thus constitute the closest
As such, they tell us little about how Salah’s signing may comparison group in the sample, with one key differ-
have influenced more quotidian forms of anti-Muslim ence as a result of their fierce rivalry: exposure to
behavior among Liverpool F.C. fans. To gain more Salah may skew negative for Evertonians, but is posi-
insight into this question, we analyze approximately tive and goal-aligned for Liverpool F.C. fans.
15 million tweets produced by U.K.-based soccer fans After obtaining followers’ account IDs, we collected
in the period preceding and following Salah joining our sample of tweets as follows. First, to ensure that the
Liverpool F.C. We find a meaningful decline in the rate users in our sample had been soccer fans prior to Salah
of anti-Muslim tweets among Liverpool F.C. fans. joining Liverpool, we subset our follower IDs to the
oldest 500,000 followers of each club and subset to those
who live in the U.K. based on the text of their self-
Data and Research Design reported locations. Once we identified longtime Twitter
followers of English Premier League teams that were
Looking at soccer fans based in the U.K., we compare likely to be located in the U.K., we randomly sampled
the frequency of anti-Muslim tweets produced by fans 10,000 followers from each team. We used Twitter’s
of Liverpool F.C. with tweets produced by fans of REST API to scrape up to 3,200 of the most recent
other English clubs over time. We began by using tweets published by each of these 60,000 U.K. soccer
Twitter’s REST API to scrape the account IDs of all fans.10 This resulted in a dataset of approximately
followers of the top five most followed teams in the
English Premier League: Manchester United F.C.
(19 million followers), Arsenal F.C. (14 million), Chel- 10
The 3,200 tweet limit is imposed by Twitter’s API. For most
sea F.C. (12 million), Liverpool F.C. (11 million), and Twitter users, we observe their entire Twitter timelines beginning
Manchester City F.C. (6 million). We also scraped the on the day they first joined the platform. For 84% of users in our
followers of Liverpool F.C.’s cross-town rival Everton sample we have tweets from before and after Salah joined Liverpool.
1118Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice?
15 million tweets produced by the 60,000 English fol- Results
lowers of the “Big Five” clubs of English soccer, as well
as Everton F.C. The results are presented in Figure 4. The top plot
To identify anti-Muslim tweets in our dataset, we shows the actual outcome data for Liverpool
began by identifying all tweets about Muslims using a F.C. fans, along with the imputed counterfactual for
generic keyword search, and using word2vec these fans. The bottom plot shows the difference
between the observed and imputed outcomes in all
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(a neural network that processes text) to find other
relevant terms in the data. We included relevant periods for Liverpool F.C. fans as well as for fans of
keywords that featured in the top 50 words that the four other large football clubs (Arsenal, Chelsea, Man-
word2vec model indicated were most similar to chester United, and Manchester City) and fans of Ever-
the terms “Muslim” and “Islam.” About 44,000 of ton. In both plots, the shaded region indicates the
the 15 million tweets in our dataset contained one posttreatment period. In the posttreatment period,
of these relevant keywords. We then took a sample of the difference between the observed and imputed out-
about 1,500 of these tweets and trained three native comes is our estimate of the average treatment effect on
English speakers to code each of these tweets as anti- the treated unit (ATT).
Muslim or not. As in the hate crime results, if the matrix completion
Using this human-coded data, we trained a Naive method is performing well, the imputed estimates
Bayes classifier to classify all of our tweets containing should closely match the observed outcomes in the
one of the keywords described above as anti-Muslim pretreatment period. Again, we observe this pattern:
or not.11 We then used this classifier to classify all the pretreatment imputed and observed outcomes for
44,000 tweets relevant to Islam or Muslims in our Liverpool tend to be very similar, and there does not
dataset as anti-Muslim or not.12 These classified appear to be a pretreatment trend that would threaten
tweets allowed us to compute the monthly proportion the validity of the treatment effect estimates.
of relevant tweets (discussing Islam or Muslims) that Examining the posttreatment periods, the observed
were anti-Muslim.13 More details about the data col- monthly proportions of anti-Muslim tweets among Liv-
lection and coding, as well as descriptive statistics, are erpool F.C. fans are consistently lower than what we
presented in Appendix B. would predict based on the synthetic control. Averaging
Our main analysis of the Twitter data uses the same across all months in the posttreatment period, the dif-
matrix completion method used in the hate crime ference between the observed outcome and imputed
analysis. This method allows us to use the rates of outcome of the proportion of anti-Muslim tweets is
anti-Muslim tweets posted by fans of Liverpool −0:035 (bootstrap-based SE = 0.006). Compared with
F.C. and other clubs in the pretreatment period to the pretreatment average among Liverpool F.C. fans,
construct a synthetic control unit for Liverpool this treatment effect represents a 47:8% drop in the
F.C. fans in the posttreatment period. This, in turn, proportion of anti-Muslim tweets (from 0.073 to
enables us to estimate how the rates of anti-Muslim 0.038). Looking at the estimates month by month, the
tweets among Liverpool F.C. fans’ tweets changed after differences between the observed and imputed out-
Salah joined the club, relative to what they would have comes begin soon after Salah agreed to join Liverpool
been if he had not joined. The previous section provides F.C., in June 2017, and persist through at least May 2018
more details on this method. —almost a year after Salah joined the team.
We employ the same permutation inference approach
as in the hate crime analysis. Only for Liverpool
F.C. followers do we estimate a consistently negative
treatment effect in the posttreatment period. The pla-
11
Our classifier’s out of sample performance yielded scores of 88% cebo estimates tend to oscillate between positive and
Accuracy, 98% Precision, 90% Recall, and an F1 score (harmonic negative treatment effects, while the Liverpool treatment
mean of Precision and Accuracy) of 94%. However, because anti- effect estimates are negative in every posttreatment
Muslim tweets were relatively rare in our data, and our training month but one—again suggesting that the observed
dataset was not balanced, Balanced Accuracy (i.e., the average of estimate for Liverpool F.C. followers is unlikely to have
the proportion of tweets classified correctly in each class individually)
is a better and more conservative measure of classifier performance.
occurred by chance. As a robustness check, we again
Our classifier performed with 70% Balanced Accuracy. Given that present a generalized difference-in-differences approach
intercoder agreement among human coders was 76%, we are satis- in Appendix B. That analysis method generates very
fied that our classifier gives us a reasonable, if imperfect, measure of similar estimates as the ones reported here.
anti-Muslim sentiment in our tweets.
12
Tweets that did not contain relevant keywords were classified as
irrelevant.
13
This measure is less sensitive to changes in the salience of topics ROBUSTNESS AND GENERALIZABILITY
related to Muslims or Islam than a related outcome: the proportion of
anti-Muslim tweets in fans’ total tweets. For example, terror attacks
TESTS
are often followed by an uptick in anti-Muslim language, but this is The hate crime and hate speech analyses show that
generally accompanied by much larger increases in tweets defending
Muslims and Islam or condemning Islamophobia, as well as upticks in
exposure to Mohamed Salah reduced prejudice in Liv-
neutral tweets discussing the event (Magdy, Darwish, and Abokho- erpool, providing support for the parasocial contact
dair 2015). We thus focus only on tweets relevant to Muslims or Islam hypothesis using real-world behaviors. Hate crimes in
to alleviate this concern. Merseyside were lower and anti-Muslim tweets among
1119Ala’ Alrababa’h et al.
FIGURE 4. Synthetic Control Results for Twitter Data
(a) Observed and imputed outcomes for Liverpool
0.20
Monthly Proportion of Anti−Muslim Tweets
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Imputed
0.15
0.10
0.05
Observed
0.00
−40 −30 −20 −10 0 10
Months relative to treatment
(b) Estimated ATT in every period (Liverpool F.C. vs. Other Clubs)
Observed − Imputed Montly Anti−Muslim Tweet Rate
0.20
0.15
0.10
0.05
0.00
−0.05
−0.10
−0.15
−40 −30 −20 −10 0 10
Months relative to treatment
Note: The top panel shows the observed (solid line) and imputed (dashed line) monthly proportion of anti-Muslim tweets in Liverpool
F.C. fans’ tweets that are relevant to Muslims or Islam. The bottom panel shows the difference between the observed and imputed
outcomes. In the posttreatment period, this is the estimate of the ATT for Liverpool compared with that of other prominent English clubs.
Liverpool F.C. fans were less common after Salah was First, one potential threat to inference is that there
signed relative to what we would have expected based there were two Islamist terrorist attacks—the Man-
on prior trends among these treated groups and based chester Arena and London Bridge attacks—roughly
on trends among control groups, whose exposure to one month before Salah was signed by Liverpool
Salah was lower in both quantity and quality. In this F.C. If these attacks led to spikes in Islamophobia in
section, we briefly summarize several extensions and the targeted cities, our results could be driven by the
robustness checks to these event study analyses. trajectory of the control units rather than a change in
1120Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice?
behavior in Liverpool. To verify that our hate crime between player and Muslim identity, undermining the
results are not driven by a spike in hate crimes in these salience of group identity needed for parasocial contact
cities, we rerun the analysis but exclude London and to take effect.
Manchester. The hate crime results are virtually Nonetheless, we look for evidence of a “Mané effect”
unchanged, as shown in Figure A.4. using the same research designs. We find no such effect
Robustness checks for the Twitter analysis are more on hate crimes when constraining the study period to
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difficult, as these two cities contain four of the five clubs the pre-Salah era and taking the date of Mané’s signing
that make up the control group in the Twitter ana- as the relevant time break (Figure A.8). We do, how-
lysis.14 However, there is reason to think that the ever, find a Mané effect on anti-Muslim tweets similar
Twitter results are not driven by upticks in Islamopho- in magnitude to the Salah effect (Figure A.9). Recall
bia in these cities: the treatment effects we uncover last that the Twitter analysis focuses only on soccer fans,
well beyond the terrorist attacks. The attacks would who are more likely to be familiar with a less publicized
have had to have caused a long-term, sustained player like Mané, shedding some light on why we might
increase in anti-Muslim tweets among just followers detect an effect solely for the Twitter analysis. One
of London- and Manchester-based clubs to generate response to an open-ended question on our survey of
the patterns that we observe. This would run counter to Liverpool F.C. fans, detailed in the next section, under-
patterns observed in studies of the effect of terror scores the idea that club fans recognize Mané as Mus-
attacks on anti-Muslim tweets, which tend to spike lim: “I think with having Mo Salah and Mané, people
and then re-equilibrate quickly following attacks should read more into Muslim life and try to under-
(Magdy, Darwish, and Abokhodair 2015). stand the kind of people our favourite players are.”
A second possibility is that the Twitter results are In sum, we find support for the parasocial contact
driven by an uptick in anti-Muslim sentiment among hypothesis in two event studies centered on Salah’s rise
fans of rival clubs—representing a backlash to Salah. to fame. These results are driven neither by backlash to
To rule out this possibility, we conduct an additional contemporaneous events nor by backlash to Salah
analysis comparing tweets of rival fans to tweets from among fans of rival clubs. We also test parasocial
people who do not follow any soccer clubs. As we detail contact by replicating our analysis for another Muslim
in Appendix B.5, rival fans did not increase anti- player. We find some evidence of generalizability by
Muslim tweets relative to non-soccer fans, after Salah’s studying Salah’s teammate Sadio Mané. As expected
signing. In short, we find no evidence of a backlash for a player with weaker media coverage and a less
effect. salient Muslim identity, we find evidence of prejudice
Third, if parasocial contact is indeed reducing preju- reduction among Liverpool F.C. fans who closely fol-
dice toward Muslims, we may wonder whether other low their club players, but not among broader residents
Muslim players have induced a similar effect. In prob- of Merseyside. These additional analyses help rule out
ing the generalizability of our results, we turn our alternative explanations for the Salah effect, while
attention to another Liverpool F.C. player, Sadio increasing confidence in the parasocial contact hypoth-
Mané—a Senegalese Muslim who joined the squad esis by testing its applicability to another Muslim
exactly one year before Salah and who also demon- player.
strates his religiosity to fans on occasion. Did Mané
have a similar effect on prejudice as Salah? Ex ante,
Mané seems to fit the criteria for the parasocial contact
hypothesis somewhat less neatly than Salah—particu- ANALYSIS OF SURVEY EXPERIMENTAL
larly sustained exposure and salient group identity. EVIDENCE
Mané is not as heavily covered by the international or
local media when compared with his Egyptian team- The evidence presented thus far suggests that exposure
mate. We scraped the headlines of Liverpool’s most to Salah may have reduced anti-Muslim behavior
widely circulated newspaper, The Liverpool Echo, to among Liverpool F.C. fans. As we outlined earlier,
analyze trends in coverage of the two players. We find the parasocial contact hypothesis suggests that sus-
that Mané’s signing captured around 3% of headlines tained, positive exposure to a minority group member
relative to Salah’s 9% (Figure A.7), suggesting that can reduce prejudice when that individual’s group
exposure to Mané is weaker compared with exposure membership is salient. The group salience assumption
to Salah. Moreover, Mané’s group identity is likely less is critical for all theories of intergroup contact—any
salient. His name is not as recognizably as Muslim as positive effects should extend beyond the specific con-
“Mohamed,” and Black Muslims tend to be perceived tact partner and generalize to other members of the
as less representative of Islam (Harvard 2017). Fans out-group (Al Ramiah and Hewstone 2013; Brown and
have yet to create chants about Mané’s religious iden- Hewstone 2005). This “generalization” of positive
tity (as they have done with Salah), speaking to the effects requires that the contact partner is viewed as
difference in group identity salience between the two representative of their group, without confirming nega-
players. These factors suggest a weaker perceived link tive stereotypes (Bond 2020; Ensari and Miller 2002).
While we have argued that Salah’s first name, family,
and public displays of religiosity all highlight his iden-
14
Chelsea and Arsenal are both located in London, and Manchester tity as a Muslim, our analysis of aggregate-level obser-
United and Manchester City are of course located in Manchester. vational data does not enable us to directly test whether
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