Finding Europe: Mapping and explaining antecedents of ‘Europeanness’ in news about the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections

Abstract

Previous research has characterized European news coverage as mainly domestic in focus, hampering the emergence of a European public sphere. This study analyses the European nature of the news coverage of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. We not only describe the level of Europeanness in news coverage but also propose a comprehensive model to explain differences across countries. We employ a cross-national media content analysis (N=52.009) conducted in all 27 EU member states. Findings show that especially public TV channels and broadsheet newspapers are more European in coverage than their private and tabloid counterparts. Newspapers are also more European in focus in general compared to television. Furthermore, coverage is more European in countries with higher public EU support, the coverage gets more European during the campaign and is more European in countries that are geographically closer to Brussels, and in which no other elections take place at the same time.Keywords: Europeanization, European elections, election coverage, cross-national comparison, media content analysis Zusammenfassung: Medienberichterstattung über die Europäische Union (EU) ist überwie-gend national fokussiert, was sowohl für die Entwicklung einer Europäischen Öffentlich-keit hinderlich ist als auch einer aktiveren Teilnahme von Seiten der Bürger am europäi-schen Projekt entgegensteht. Die vorliegende Studie analysiert die Medienberichterstattung zur Europawahl 2009. Dabei beschreiben wir nicht nur, wie europäisch der Fokus der Berichterstattung zur Europawahl war, sondern entwickeln und testen zudem ein Model, um Unterschiede in der Berichterstattung zwischen den Mitgliedsstaaten anhand von länder-, medien-und zeitabhängigen Faktoren zu erklären. Unsere Analyse basiert dabei auf einer in allen 27 EU-Mitgliedsstaaten durchgeführten Medieninhaltsanalyse von Zeitungs-und TVNachrichten (N=52.009). Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Medienberichterstattung in öffentlich-rechtlichen TV-Sendern und in Qualitätszeitungen europäischer im Fokus ist, verglichen mit privaten TV-Sendern und anderen Zeitungen. Zeitungen sind zudem generell europäischer im Fokus ihrer Berichterstattung als TV-Sender. Desweiteren zeigen unsere Ergebnisse, dass Medienberichterstattung generell europäischer im Fokus ist in Ländern, in denen die öffentliche Meinung gegenüber der EU positiver eingestellt ist und in Ländern die geographisch näher zu Brüssel liegen und in denen keine andere nationale Wahl parallel zur Europawahl stattfindet. Zudem nimmt der Fokus auf Europa zu, je näher der Wahltag rückt.

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

“…Europeanness in the news can be assessed by different dimensions pertaining to Europeanisation as a vertical or horizontal process, with vertical Europeanisation looking at attention from national media to EU actors and institutions and horizontal Europeanisation at actors and issues from other Member States (Koopmans & Erbe ). Indicators include the prominence of EU actors in news coverage (vertical), the prominence of EU issues (vertical), the location at which the action depicted in a story is taking place (mostly horizontal), or the location of the entity that is depicted as being affected (mostly horizontal) (Schuck & de Vreese ; see also Trenz ).…”

“…Previous research has found that public broadcasters – endowed with an obligation to inform about politics and public affairs – are more likely to cover European affairs and to be more European in focus than their commercial counterparts (Peter & de Vreese ; Schuck & de Vreese, ). This has also been the case for ‘quality’ broadsheets vis‐à‐vis tabloid‐style newspapers (Trenz ).…”

“…Third, this study also focuses on explaining change in the visibility of EU news from one period to the next. It thereby explains dynamic developments rather than static shares of coverage, adding an over‐time comparative component as recently called for (Schuck & de Vreese ). Fourth, the study joins others (e.g., Brüggemann & Kleinen‐ von Königslöw ; Koopmans & Statham ) by going beyond the visibility of EU news and also attempting to explain the Europeanness of the news.…”

The Complicated Relation Between News Frames and Political Trust: A Case Study of Romania

“…The internal consistency of the scale was measured using Cronbach's alpha (alpha = .761). The scale was adapted from classical scales used to measure political efficacy (Gerber et al 2011;Gallego and Olberski 2011;Schuck and de Vreese 2011). For the efficacy scale, '1' represents people's trust that they can change or have an influence on or at least matter to the government, while '7' stands for a general sense of powerlessness people associate with politicians and politics in general.…”

Who Drives the Agenda: Media or Parties? A Seven-Country Comparison in the Run-Up to the 2014 European Parliament Elections

“…The same agenda-setting mechanisms pursued by political parties and found in a national context could pertain, or even be more pronounced, in a European context for at least two reasons. First, since the EU on its own has little news value (Statham 2008), it needs to be promoted by political actors, such as parties or candidates, to be visible (Adam 2007;De Vreese 2003;Jalali and Silva 2011;Machill et al 2006;Schuck and De Vreese 2011). Second, the introduction of the "Spitzenkandidaten" for the presidency of the European Commission (Van der Brug et al 2016) personalized the 2014 EP election and led to a party-driven rise in media attention (Schulze 2016).…”