The European Union in the media coverage of the 2019 European election campaign in Italy: towards the Europeanization of the Italian public sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 668-690
Author(s):  
Cristina Cremonesi ◽  
Antonella Seddone ◽  
Giuliano Bobba ◽  
Moreno Mancosu
2020 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Jadwiga Nadolska

The purpose of the article is to diagnose the causes of the increased interest shown by Poles in the European parliamentary election in 2019. From 2014 to 2019, Poles’ participation in elections to the European Parliament went up from 23.83% to 45.68%. Drawing on Europe salience theory and second-order election theory, I set out to determine whether changes in Poles’ attitudes towards the European Union led to this almost twofold increase in turnout from 2014 to 2019, or whether this trend was mainly attributable to the election cycle, that is, the coincidence in 2019 of both European and domestic parliamentary elections. My research involved an analysis of survey data (CBOS, Eurobarometr), statistical data, and the course of the European parliamentary election campaign. During the analysis, it turned out that in the years 2014–2019 there were no significant changes in how the European Union and its institutions were perceived by Poles that could explain the dramatic increase in interest in the European election. What had the greatest impact on voter behaviour was the fact that the European election was held just several months before an election to the Polish parliament. The Polish political parties treated the European election in May as a test of support in the nation election to be held in the autumn – as a ‘quasi-first round.’ The European election campaign was heavily covered by the media, and focused on domestic issues (building up Poland’s welfare state). The ruling party’s announcement of numerous social reforms and a desire to influence the result of the ‘May round’ mobilised an above-average number of Poles to take an active part in the European election.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Serafis ◽  
Jolanta Drzewiecka ◽  
Sara Greco

While these lines were written, Taliban were conquering Afghanistan, establishing a regime of terror in the country, while concurrently provoking a wide conflict in the Western public sphere about responsibilities and consequences of this situation. More specifically, Europe witnesses a racist and xenophobic wave of discourses against a new possible escape of refugees toward Europe; presently such discourses abound in politics and the media. It is more than a truism nowadays that, in crisis-stricken Europe, there is an increasing politicization of migration, which takes place against the background and mutual overlapping of diverse crises. More specifically, migration has become a focal and quite polarizing issue in the European public sphere especially since the numbers of refugees, escaping from conflict territories of the Middle East (e. g., Syria), crossing the Mediterranean, dramatically increased starting in 2014 (Bevelander & Wodak, 2019a). The so-called “refugee crisis,” as this movement was portrayed by mainstream media and powerful political figures in Europe (Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, & Wodak, 2018), contributed to social and economic tensions (such as the Eurozone “debt crisis”) that took place in the European Union and played into Brexit that followed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoleta Corbu ◽  
Raluca Buturoiu ◽  
Flavia Durach

The European Union (EU) is under severe pressure, due to the multiple crises it has to manage. Among them, the refugee crisis is remarkable, since it is shaking both the individual member states and the EU as a whole. The media coverage of the refugee crisis is important because the media still are the main source of information concerning distant issues (the refugee crisis included), and as such it facilitates people’s access to social reality. Using the perspective of agenda-setting and the conceptual background of framing theory, we aim to (1) identify the most prominent frames online media employ with reference to the refugee crisis, and (2) reveal the tone of voice online media use when portraying issues related to this crisis. To achieve these two goals, we content analyzed 1493 online news articles, published between April 15, 2015 and February 29, 2016. Main findings show that online media outlets mainly refer to the refugee crisis in terms of responsibility and conflict, in this order of prominence. At the same time, online media portals prefer using a reasonably balanced viewpoint when portraying the refugees, and a slightly negative one in terms of attitudes towards the European Union.


2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
HOLLI A. SEMETKO ◽  
WOUTER VAN DER BRUG ◽  
PATTI M. VALKENBURG

This two-wave panel study was designed to investigate the effects of the media coverage leading up to and including an important European Union event (a summit meeting of EU leaders) on citizens’ attitudes towards the EU and European integration. A random sample of 817 citizens in the Netherlands was surveyed one month before the Amsterdam Summit in June 1997 and three days after it had ended. Two types of attitudes towards Europe were distinguished by scaling analysis: (a) national–pragmatic attitudes towards the EU and (b) supranational–idealistic attitudes towards the EU. Results indicated that supranational–idealistic attitudes were influenced positively as a result of the media coverage related to the summit, whereas national–pragmatic attitudes did not show a significant change. A control variable, attitudes towards immigrants, which was included to detect possible testing effects, showed no change. Effects of the summit’s media coverage were in the same direction across all levels of political knowledge and political attentiveness. When predicting change in supranational–idealistic attitudes, controlling for the original attitude and political knowledge, those who were most attentive to politics were more strongly influenced. These findings challenge traditional views of the impact of knowledge, attention and interest on attitude change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Gennadiy Chernov

This paper deals with the growing populism movement in Europe. This movement is critical of the European Union and its certain economic and immigration policies. The studies dominant in the field look at different communicative aspects of these phenomena. They point at styles and rhetoric related to populism and failures of the pro-EU forces to communicate effectively why these policies are right and populist citizens are wrong.This paper argues that the problem is not in successes or failures of communication per se, but in shutting out many European citizens from the debate in the public sphere. Not finding reflections of the concerns in the media and policies, and having fewer options to relay their messages to elites perceived to be in power in the EU, these citizens become ‘populist citizens’, and they start voting for populist parties in growing numbers.The article concludes that studies of a communicative aspect of populism need not only discuss mediation, but the policies related to this mediation. Policies may be successful only when people accept them after a free debate. That is what was in the heart of the communicative acts in European history.


Author(s):  
Marta Martins

AbstractA higher level of mobility of people has marked the European Union (EU), with immigrants moving from one place to another, every year, looking for a better quality of life, often fleeing from war and poverty. In the wake of enlargement of the European Union, the United Kingdom (UK) experienced high inward migration. One of the main focuses of UK media coverage was immigration from Eastern European countries. The UK referendum on Brexit on 23 June 2016, was followed by an increase in hate crimes linked to migration issues and, subsequently, a media apparatus of toxic discourse and fear of the criminal ‘Other’. This paper aims to reveal how newspaper articles and personal comments written in response to these articles, represented creative and media-driven anxieties about ‘opening’ borders in the EU. The empirical sample builds on news media coverage of the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case, published in two UK newspapers—the Daily Mail and The Independent. Based on critical surveillance studies and cultural media studies, I elaborate on the notion of moral panic, dramatised by the media, which mobilises specific compositions of ‘otherness’ by constructing suspicion and criminalising inequality by particular social and ethnic groups and nationalities. I argue that the media portrays the dramatisation of transnational narratives of risk and (in)security, which redraws territorial borders and (re)define Britain’s global identity. The analysis shows how the news media in the Brexit vote continually raised and legitimised awareness related to the migration as a vehicle that enables the ‘folk-devil’ to cross borders. This context postulates an ideology that converges on a relationship of intransigence and criminal convictions, in the context of a politics of inclusion and exclusion. I conclude by emphasising how the media intersects different social and geographical spaces in which migration takes place. Media-constructed categories of suspicion targets have been previously created and ‘suspect communities’ have already been socially accepted, thereby confirming and reshaping understandings of their identities and communities.


Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110083
Author(s):  
Michaela Maier ◽  
Carlos Jalali ◽  
Jürgen Maier ◽  
Alessandro Nai ◽  
Sebastian Stier

European elections have been described as second-order phenomena for voters, the media, but also parties. Yet, since 2009, there exists evidence that not only voters, but also political parties assign increasing significance to European elections. While initially ‘issue entrepreneurs’ were held responsible for this development, the latest campaigns have raised the question of whether mainstream parties are finally also campaigning on European issues. In this article, we examine European Union (EU) salience in the 2019 European Parliament (EP) campaigns of government and opposition parties and the predictors of their strategic behaviours. We test the relevance of factors derived from the selective emphasis and the co-orientation approach within an integrated model of strategic campaign communication based on expert evaluations of 191 parties in 28 EU member states. Results show that the traditional expectation that government parties silence EU issues does not hold anymore; instead, the average EU salience of government and opposition parties is similar on the national level. The strongest predictors for a party’s decision to campaign on EU issues are the co-orientation towards the campaign agendas of competing parties, and party’s EU position.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brosius ◽  
Erika J van Elsas ◽  
Claes H de Vreese

Over the past decade, the European Union has lost the trust of many citizens. This article investigates whether and how media information, in particular visibility and tonality, impact trust in the European Union among citizens. Combining content analysis and Eurobarometer survey data from 10 countries between 2004 and 2015, we study both direct and moderating media effects. Media tone and visibility have limited direct effects on trust in the European Union, but they moderate the relation between trust in national institutions and trust in the European Union. This relation is amplified when the European Union is more visible in the media and when media tone is more positive towards the European Union, whereas it is dampened when media tone is more negative. The findings highlight the role of news media in the crisis of trust in the European Union.


Author(s):  
Jani Selin ◽  
Matilda Hellman ◽  
Tuulia Lerkkanen

A rapidly growing globalized and digitalized gambling industry has compelled European jurisdictions to take action in order to secure some level of gambling market control, to secure public funds from gambling, and to protect citizens from gambling-related harm. This study concerns the market protectionist endeavour to merge three gambling operators into one state-owned monopoly in Finland in 2017. The justification of the systemic change is analysed in key policy documents and media reporting that discerns the political narratives that nudged the monopoly merger from the idea stage to its completion. Within the narratives, the merger is presented as necessary due to the threats of market intrusion by foreign gambling operators and the likelihood of an internal system implosion framed by European Union (EU) law. The worries expressed in the studied materials plug into a general zeitgeist of globalization. The justifications of the systemic change presuppose the inevitable determination of the change and an innate and constant human desire to gamble. Critical views on the merger were introduced in the media at a late stage, stressing the role of the media as a facilitator and manufacturer of political consent. The study demonstrates how market protectionist justifications can, through the maintenance of a regulated gambling market, assure preservation of national public funds obtained from gambling in the EU. The official gambling policy objective of securing public health played a secondary role in the process.RésuméLa croissance fulgurante de l’industrie du jeu, mondialisée et numérisée, a incité les autorités européennes à prendre des mesures afin d’assurer un certain contrôle sur ce marché, de garantir les fonds publics provenant du jeu et de protéger les citoyens des dommages liés au jeu. Cette étude porte sur la tentative protectionniste de la Finlande de fusionner trois exploitants de jeux d’argent en un monopole d’État en 2017. On analyse les raisons justifiant le changement systémique dans des documents politiques clés et des reportages dans les médias en mettant en évidence le contenu narratif politique qui a conduit à la fusion du monopole, depuis la naissance de l’idée jusqu’à sa concrétisation. Dans ce contenu narratif, la fusion est présentée comme une nécessité en raison des menaces d’intrusion par des exploitants de jeux étrangers et la probabilité d’une implosion du système interne encadré par le droit de l’UE. Les inquiétudes exprimées dans les documents analysés cadrent avec une tendance généralisée à l’égard de la mondialisation. Les fondements qui sous-tendent ce changement systémique présupposent l’inévitabilité du changement et un désir inné et constant de jouer chez l’être humain. Les points de vue critiques sur la fusion sont présentés tardivement dans les médias, ce qui confirme le rôle des médias comme facilitateur et créateur de consentement politique. L’étude montre que les justifications protectionnistes du marché peuvent, par le maintien d’une réglementation du marché des jeux, garantir l’apport de fonds publics nationaux générés par les jeux de hasard dans l’UE. L’objectif officiel de la politique en matière de jeu visant à protéger la santé publique a joué un rôle de second plan dans le processus.


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