This paper, based on a literature review, presents a quantitative overview of the role of natural disturbances in European forests from 1850 to 2000. Such an overview provides a basis for modelling the possible impacts of climate change and enables one to assess trends in disturbance regimes in different countries and/or periods. Over the period 1950–2000, an annual average of 35 million m3 wood was damaged by disturbances; there was much variation between years. Storms were responsible for 53% of the total damage, fire for 16%, snow for 3% and other abiotic causes for 5%. Biotic factors caused 16% of the damage, and half of this was caused by bark beetles. For 7% of the damage, no cause was given or there was a combination of causes. The 35 million m3 of damage is about 8.1% of the total fellings in Europe and about 0.15% of the total volume of growing stock. Over the period 1961–2000, the average annual area of forest fires was 213 000 ha, which is 0.15% of the total forest area in Europe. Most types of damage seem to be increasing. This is partly an artefact of the improved availability of information. The most likely explanations for an increase in damage from disturbances are changes in forest management and resulting changes in the condition of the forest. Forest area, average volume of growing stock and average stand age have increased considerably, making the forest more vulnerable and increasing the resources that can be damaged. Since forest resources are expected to continue to increase, it is likely that damage from disturbances will also increase in future.

Public attitudes towards the European Union (EU) are at the heart of a growing body of research. The nature, structure and antecedents of these attitudes, however, are in need of conceptual and empirical refinement. With growing diversification of the policies of the Union, a one-dimensional approach to attitudes towards the EU may be insufficient. This study reviews existing approaches towards theorizing EU public opinion. Based on this inventory, originally collected public opinion survey data (n = 1394) indicate the presence of five dimensions of EU attitudes: performance, identity, affection, utilitarianism and strengthening. The study furthermore shows that different predictors of EU public opinion matter to differing extents when explaining these dimensions. In light of these findings, we suggest tightening the link, conceptually and empirically, between attitudinal dimensions and their antecedents.

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The ability of the news media to mobilize voters during an election campaign is not well understood. Most extant research has been conducted in single-country studies and has paid little or no attention to the contextual level and the conditions under which such effects are more or less likely to occur. This study tests the mobilizing effect of conflict news framing in the context of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. The unique multi-method and comparative cross-national study design combines a media content analysis (N 5 48,982) with data from a two-wave panel survey conducted in twenty-one countries (N 5 32,411). Consistent with expectations, conflict framing in campaign news mobilized voters to vote. Since the effect of conflict news was moderated by evaluations of the EU polity in the general information environment, conflict framing more effectively mobilized voters in countries where the EU was evaluated more positively.The scholarly and public discussion of the role of the media during elections is heated and ongoing. In the United States, much attention has been paid to the role of political advertising in either mobilizing or demobilizing the electorate.1 In other parts of the world, where legal restrictions constrain the role of advertising, most attention has been devoted to the role of the news media. The evidence is also mixed; some studies suggest that the news media plays a general mobilizing role, while others report a mixed pattern that distinguishes, for example, between the mobilizing effects of exposure to TV news and the demobilizing effects of exposure to other TV content, or between public broadcasting news and private TV news. 2Previous research has identified different content features of news media coverage that have the potential to either mobilize or demobilize citizens in electoral contexts. 'Mobilizing' media contact includes news that focuses on disagreement, conflict and differences of opinion between political actors; it shows that there is something at stake and something to choose from.3 This study focuses on the role of conflict framing in election campaign news coverage and assesses its potentially mobilizing effect on voters. We contrast this effect with the role of mere news exposure -that is, overall individual news consumption regardless of content.We investigate the effect of news media coverage of the election on individual turnout, while controlling for many of the usual explanatory factors for turnout. To examine the role of news coverage in mobilizing the electorate over the course of a campaign, our research design combines a media content analysis of campaign news coverage with panel survey data. We focus on the impact of campaign news coverage framed in terms of conflict on voter mobilization, for which we outline our expectations below. We are interested in the conditional nature of this effect; we expect that conflict news is particularly mobilizing if voters have little evidence that there is 'something at stake' during the election campaign. We there...

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.