Public Representations of the EU in the National Media. A Comparative Assessment of France, the UK, and Spain in Times of Austerity (2008-2014)

I analyse mainstream media representations of the European Union (EU) during the recent economic crisis/post-crisis period (2008-2014) in France, the UK, and Spain, assessing the variations in salience, tone, and polarity by country and over time. I inquire whether and how EU legitimacy was affected by the ways in which the mass media portrayed European affairs in the national public spheres. How have the national media presented the EU throughout the crisis? Have EU actors, policies or interventions been legitimised by positive assessments or contested in the national public spheres? How consistent are the media coverage patterns across countries and over time? How stable within each country? If any, why and under which conditions do variations arise? I apply computer-assisted quantitative text analyses to a sample of 261 claims from the original LIVEWHAT project, which were published in 15 national newspapers of France, the UK, and Spain. Because information on EU policies is mainly spread by national media at the national level, and quality newspapers are still leading agenda-setters, powerful mediators of policy outputs (Boomgaarden et al. 2011, Walgrave and Van Aelst 2006), I analyse how they covered the EU during the implementation of austerity policies that were rejected at the national level. I aim at understanding the different national informational environments in which European citizens live, and which contribute to their opinion formation. I compare three European countries that present divergent effects of the economic crisis, of EU financial assistance, policy implementations, and particular institutional set-ups (Saurugger 2016, Pisany-Ferry et al. 2013). The particular dynamics of European policy-making during the economic crisis, with extraordinary political interventions, exposed the EU to a much greater public visibility in the national domains. The media and public opinion at large react to economic changes. As debates and policies feed back into the perceptions of the public (Trenz 2004, Wolfe et al. 2013, Hobolt and Tilley 2014, Soroka et al. 2015), the way in which the EU is presented in the national public spheres may matter beyond specific economic conditions (Soroka et al. 2015, Jones 2009, Baumgartner and Mahoney 2008). The media play a central role linking policy-making and the public – crucial to legitimate polity, policies, and politics.