Measuring European Identity in Media Discourses. A Quantitative Approach Presented on the Example of the Irish Referendum for Ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon

During the current financial crisis and controversies over the Euros stability the statable distrust between the European member-states gives evidence for a lack of European identity. It seems that the EU has failed to implement a sufficient understanding of the meaning of being European and the sense for belonging together that could preserve its stability in times of crisis. In each member-state it is still a challenge for political elites to argue for the benefits of membership in the European Union and to generate support from the public. The paper addresses the question how European identity develops in the European Union. We differentiate on the one hand between identity constructions in different countries and on the other hand between political actors and representatives of the civil society. This enables us to monitor different stances within the national constructions of a European identity. Due to its immense relevance for political actions, researchers in several disciplines have made efforts to examine European identity. As a consequence the theoretical conceptions of identity and the methodological approaches for measuring identity differ remarkably. In contrast to surveys that focus on the individual’s attitudes towards the European Union this paper argues for an examination of a society’s identity on the level of public discourse. European identity is thereby seen as a social construction that is negotiated through communication in public debates with various contributions by different political and societal actors. Therefore, European identity is ascertainable in each nations media discourse. Researchers that follow this view most often conduct qualitative analyses of media content that help to understand identity constructions but do not enable representative comparisons. For this purpose the topic has to be approached quantitatively. So far, only a few content analyses have taken this route. This can be explained by the lack of sufficient indicators: By merely counting we-references in media outlets content analyses only take explicit mentions of the EU into account as part of ‘us’ which diminishes possible results. We propose a more subtle approach: Through the quantitative yet detailed measurement of the national position towards the EU as a reference object, we are able to establish the perception of closeness versus distance to the EU. Thus we provide information about how the EU is constructed and how each nation perceives its own fit within that community. This paper focuses on the most recent occasion for reflecting European identity before the financial crisis: the failed Irish referendum for ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon on June the 12th, 2008. First it aims on an exemplary demonstration of our methodological approach for measuring identity and second on comparing the identity constructions in different European countries. We analyze two weekly newspapers in Germany, France and Great Britain as well as Poland, Latvia and Romania respectively.