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.

Recent studies have shown that the most important factor explaining opinions on European Union issues is attitudes towards immigrants. Two arguments are given to explain this effect. We contend that these arguments are both built on the idea that people with anti-immigrant attitudes frame other Europeans as an out-group. We then test the validity of these arguments by measuring how respondents in a voter survey frame the issue of Turkish membership. We find that framing the issue in terms of out-groups indeed mediates the effect of anti-immigrant attitudes on support for Turkish membership. This finding offers new insights into why levels of public support vary over different EU issues, because opposition is likely to increase when an issue is more easily framed in terms of out-groups.

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This study extends the boundary conditions of mediated contact theory by (a) differentiating between mediated contact quantity and quality, (b) examining whether mediated contact exerts effects above and beyond direct contact, and (c) offering causal and generalizable evidence on the effects of exposure to numerous individual outgroup members in news media. We match individual‐level data from a representative panel survey with data on the amount of coverage about members from two outgroups and with the results from validated sentiment analysis. Mediated contact, and especially its quantity, improved outgroup attitudes independently of direct contact. These findings emerged for both outgroups and across two outcome measures.

First, this study tests for media effects on support for EU enlargement in a natural setting, while including actual media content in the analysis. Second, the moderation by anti‐immigrant attitudes of media effects is tested, as it is argued that perceptions of ‘others’ influences how new information on enlargement is received. The study draws on a two‐wave panel survey and a media content analysis in 21 countries. The results suggest there is a media effect, although not from individual exposure but from the information environment. In addition, individuals with stronger anti‐immigrant attitudes are more strongly affected by a negative information environment.