Europe in the News: What Explains the Saliency and Tone of EU Related Stories?

Existing literature provides a convincing explanation of variations in the saliency of EU issues in the media over time. It has not been systematically analyzed however the tone associated with EU related stories, nor the relationship between the tone and the visibility of domestic and EU actors in the media. The analysis of these questions is interesting for its consequences upon the legitimacy of EU policies and institutions, and because it provides important information about power relations in EU and domestic governance. This paper is oriented to fill this gap. It analyses whether the tone used by the Spanish media when referring to the EU has been predominately positive, negative or neutral towards European integration and towards domestic interests, with especial attention to the impact of the economic crisis initiated in 2008. Results illustrates that the Spanish media follow criteria of news value to inform about the EU, but contrary to other EU countries, value does not results from party conflict over European integration neither can be fully explained by the occurrence of EU events. The saliency and tone of EU related stories, the mobilization of actors and its visibility in the media occurs parallel to variations in the benefits perceived from integration and following strong patterns of media political parallelism. The paper relies on a comprehensive database containing information about all the front-pages stories published in the most read newspapers in Spain, El País and El Mundo from 2004 to 2012.