Blaming the EU?! An International Comparison of Responsibility Attributions in Media Coverage about the Financial Crisis

The European financial crisis is not only an issue of enormous social relevance, it also triggers the question about who is responsible. Since the beginning of this crisis, we see a rise of Euroskepticism among EU citizens: The project of the European Integration turns out to be the scapegoat of the crisis. As the way an issue is presented in the media shapes citizens’ mindset towards the topic (see e.g.Matthes, 2007) and responsibility judgements play a central role in people’s attitudes towards political actors (see e.g.Maestas, Atkeson, Croom, & Bryant, 2008) our research question is: Who is voicing which responsibility attributions in the media coverage about the financial crisis in Austria, Germany and Portugal? Looking at the EU, this question is of particular relevance as in systems with multiple levels of governments, it is especially difficult for citizens to properly assign credit and blame (Hobolt, Tilley, & Wittrock, 2013) plus the supranational level can be used as scapegoat from national actors. Despite the question, which European and national actors even get the chance to voice their opinion in the media, we expect differences in the way political actors will try to strategically assign responsibility for the cause and for the treatment of the crisis (Iyengar, 1989, 1996). Looking at the national level, we assume that these differences arise from the position of the actor’s party (government vs. opposition) (Benoit, 2007) as well its ideological orientation (Europhile vs. Euroskeptic) (Downs, 1957). We suppose that also the degree of Euroskepticism among citizens and the question whether a country is more or less affected by the crisis are relevant factors. To test our assumptions, we conduct a quantitative content analysis of articles with reference to the EU in two quality newspapers per country twelve weeks prior to the EP election 2014.