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Euroscepticism and the Media

FRIDAY NOV 5, 2010 1ST YEAR No 1 4201 words

Difference in
EU coverage in
an English and
Scottish
newspaper

University of Amsterdam
Course Foundations of European Communication Studies
Name Emilie Kasteleijn
Professor Dr. K. L. K. Brants
Index

1. Introduction p. 2

2. Euroscepticism throughout Europe p. 3

2.1 Defining Euroscepticism p. 3

2.2 Euroscepticism types p. 4

3. European media and Euroscepticism p. 6

3.1 European media coverage on the EU p. 6

3.2 Comparison of European media p. 7

4. Method and analysis p. 9

4.1 Selection of articles p. 8

4.2 Operationalisation p. 8

5. Results p. 11

5.1 Prominence of the EU p. 11

5.2 Evaluation of the EU p. 11

6. Conclusion p. 13

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1. Introduction

It is not surprising that the term ‘Euroscepticism’ was established by a journalist of a


British newspaper back in 1985 (Spiering, 2004). Ever since, the term has been
popularly used as a collective for negative opinions on the EU throughout Europe, in
which the UK has always been seen as a Eurosceptic country (Grant, 2008). This is
because ministers in the British government often oppose measures coming from
Brussels, as is it assumed that they fear the reaction of the British public that is very
negative about the EU (Schuck et al., in press), but also that of the media (Daddow,
2004; Grant, 2008). Moreover, it is widely known that the London-based news media
and the EU traditionally have a rocky relationship, as primarily the English press has
always been very critical and harsh towards the EU (Gavin, 2001; Spiering, 2004).
Not only amongst the general people, but also in most studies on the British
media and public opinion towards the EU, the English press is often mistakenly taken
to represent the British press (Daddow, 2004; De Vreese, 2007; Haesly, 2001;
McDowall, 2006; Spiering, 2004). This subtle differences in opinions on the EU and
EU coverage in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are therefore
overshadowed. However, it is plausible that the Scottish public opinion on the EU is
more nuanced as the EU can offer them benefits in order to gain their independence
from the UK (Dardanelli, 2005). In this study, I will therefore make a distinction
between the English and Scottish press in researching the extent and dimensions of
Euroscepticism in the British press. Emperically testing the extent of Euroscepticism,
I will eventually answer the following research question; “Does the press in
Eurosceptic England portray the EU differently from the press in Scotland?”
As news media and more specifically newspapers are the main sources of
information on EU issues for citizens, they are often blamed to fuel Euroscepticism
(De Vreese, 2007). Newspapers influence public opinion by selecting the issues that
they cover, highlighting specific segments of the EU and framing them in specific
ways. To research the differences in EU coverage in an English and a Scottish
newspaper, I will take that what Euroscepticism denotes as a starting point. Besides,
as the media are blamed for Euroscepticism and as they are a product of society, they
must inhibit important information to explain the presence of and differences in
Euroscepticism in England and Scotland to a certain extent.

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2. Euroscepticism throughout Europe

2.1 Defining Euroscepticism


The term was first used by a British journalist in 1985, describing public expressions
of British politicians that identified themselves as Eurosceptics (Lees, 2002). Ever
since the ratification process of the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s,
Euroscepticism has been popularly used as a collective for negative opinions on
different segments of the EU throughout Europe, which causes the term to be hard to
define (Lees, 2002; Daddow, 2004; Sørensen, 2008). Because the term was first used
in Britain, Lees (2002) argues that it relates to the specific situation in Britain and
therefore suffers a British bias. He then contradicts himself by stating that it nowadays
stands for a self-ascribed categorisation. However, the Europe-wide popular usage of
the term is the very reason Euroscepticism has lost its British bias.
Although it is assumed to be unique in every Member State, based in cultural
history (Sørensen, 2008), many researchers have focused on defining Euroscepticism
as a European phenomenon. It helps explaining the ‘how’ and eventually, when the
background is taken into account, the ‘why’ of Euroscepticism in a Member State.
Euroscepticism can range from rejection to criticism, often referred to as ‘hard’ and
‘soft’ Euroscepticism formulated by Szczerbiak and Taggart (2001, in Sørensen,
2006). The differentiation is however often based on party positions and applying it to
other levels as the media can be problematic because not many know if they want
withdrawal from the EU. The scepticism can relate to objectives of the EU or how the
EU executes its objectives (Hooghe & Marks, 2007; Daddow, 2006; Sørensen, 2006).
The future of the EU, further integration and expansion, is another third dimension
one can be sceptic about (Vasilopoulou, 2009).
Although the definition of Euroscepticism and measuring it at public opinion
level is already problematic on itself, it gets even more complex if we take the sources
of opinions on the EU into account as they are different for everyone (Lees, 2002;
Gavin, 2001). Nevertheless, one can argue that citizens of a country share the same
opinions on specific issues. Research shows that we can distinguish clear patterns of
considerations for a negative public opinion on the EU. Many researchers found
economic considerations and cost-benefit analyses as key causes of Euroscepticism
(Eichenberg & Dalton, 1993; Gabel, 1993; Anderson & Reichert, 1996; McLaren,

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2002). As the EU originally was the embodiment of European economic cooperation,
public opinion was often framed in economic performance evaluation (Hooghe &
Marks, 2007). However, when the EU intensified cooperation since the Maastricht
Treaty, this caused the focus of the EU to shift from economic cooperation to
cooperation concerning policy and cultural issues (Van der Brug & Van Spanje, 2009;
Hooghe & Marks, 2007). As people feared loss of national sovereignty and presumed
that further integration would affect national cultures, strong feelings of nationality
explained negative opinions on the EU (Eichenberg & Dalton, 1993; McLaren, 2002).
Just as national identity as a source of negative public opinion on the EU gained
attention because of further integration, so did dissatisfaction with democratic and
political functioning of the European Union. Perception of democratic deficit
negatively affects public opinion on the EU (Rohrschneider, 2002; Eichenberg &
Dalton, 1993).

2.4 Euroscepticism types


How one evaluates a previous set out dimension is dependent of a complex
framework of reference, as citizens of every country have their own experience with
and expectations of the EU. For example, a small country is more likely to
economically benefit from the EU (Sørensen, 2006). Sørensen (2008) therefore
developed four types of Euroscepticism, whereby she includes nation-wide predictors,
like cultural history, ideology and principles. The first type is ideological
Euroscepticism, that has to do with ideology of the EU that contrasts with a country’s
ideology. Utilitarian Euroscepticism relates to cost-benefit analyses and the
perception of the EU not being utile to the country. The sovereignty type has to do
with shared feelings of national identity in the country causing fear of further
integration that would weaken national sovereignty. As a fourth type Sørensen (2006)
mentions principled Euroscepticism whereby rejection of any kind of integration or
cooperation on no clear grounds is the case. This type overlaps with ‘hard’
Euroscepticism of Szczerbiak and Taggart (2001, in Sørensen, 2006).
Although Sørensen stated in 2006 that empirical research of Euroscepticism is
not enough to fully explain Euroscepticism in a country, for her 2008 typology she
went a step back by using empirical indicators to find out patterns of Euroscepticism
in Denmark. The four types of Euroscepticism she set up with help of empirical data
of the Eurobarometer were economic, sovereignty-based, democratic and social

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Euroscepticism. However, the social type seems redundant, as for example the
indicator ‘Loss of social benefits’ relates more to economic disadvantages. Sørensen
(2008) found that the types of Euroscepticism lay out a pattern of Euroscepticism in
Denmark, but to fully understand it, further research to cultural context is necessary.
A point of criticism on the article is that Sørensen (2006; 2008) constantly claims that
Euroscepticism in a country is unique, but she lacks to research the nature of that
uniqueness.

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3. European media and Euroscepticism

3.1 European media coverage on the EU


Studies on the considerations and conditions of public support for European
integration have provided us with important explanations of Euroscepticism.
However, De Vreese and Boomgaarden (2006) argue that in addition to these factors,
the role of the media on public opinion formation is very important. Throughout
Europe, the media have fulfilled a comparative role as informers to the public in
European societies and there is much in common to research (Golding, 2008). Many
studies on media effects were done Europe-wide and it is adopted that the media
shape public opinion. They are our main sources of information on political issues for
the public, as is shown in Eurobarometer data over the past years (Menéndez Alarcón,
2010). Furthermore, as EU citizens have little direct contact with the EU and as the
EU is hardly directly visible in the daily lives of its citizens, it is not surprising that
the media being the political reality are often blamed for the negative opinions on the
EU that are prevalent in Member States, and especially in the UK, where the public
has historically been very negative against the EU, according to Eurobarometer data
(De Vreese, 2007; De Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006; Menéndez Alarcón, 2010;
Schudson, 1997). Especially newspapers are subject of research in this field, because
they include more political news and have fewer limitations in terms of time, space
and costs to cover EU topics (De Vreese et al., 2006 in Menéndez Alarcón, 2010).
It is plausible that the media influence public opinion, but how do they do so?
Many researchers take the agenda-setting theory into account, which suggests that
what is on the media agenda decides what is on the public agenda (De Boer &
Brennecke, 2004; De Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006). To go a step further in order to
explain support for the EU, researchers suggest that the news media can also form the
grounds on which citizens evaluate political issues (De Vreese & Boomgaarden,
2006). For example; when the economy of the EU is highlighted in the media, the
cost-benefit analysis can be the dimension by which citizens evaluate the EU. Also,
when the cultural issue is more important, people take ‘soft’, less rational, and mostly
negative predictors into account, such as national identity and cultural threat (De
Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006). Then, they found that the frame of the coverage
affects the way citizens make sense of issues. Journalists use a specific frame, whether
deliberately or instinctively, in order for them as well as their public to make sense of

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reality (de Boer & Brennecke, 2004). De Vreese and Boomgaarden (2006) found that
when is focused on potential gains and advantages of the EU, this will invoke gain-
seeking behaviour and increase support for enlargement.

3.2 Comparison of European media


All of the previously set out theories specify the assumption that “the way the media
present the news can affect how audiences understand and perceive the EU”
(Menéndez Alarcón, 2010, p. 399). Nevertheless, next to being of great function for
society, they are also the product of society, emerging in a societal context. Thus it is
logical that there are varieties in the press throughout Europe (Golding, 2008). The
British press is extraordinary in the case of the EU, as it historically is most negative
about the EU from all Member States (Daddow; 2004; De Vreese, 2007; Spiering,
2004). However, something inaccurately called ‘British’ often is just ‘English’,
disregarding Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh (McDowall, 2006). Furthermore,
positive attitudes towards specific segments of the EU present in Scotland and Wales
are overshadowed by the Eurosceptic English press (Haesly, 2001).
Specifically, Scotland often being researched as part of the UK is the reason
why there are not many figures available on Scottish EU-coverage and Scottish
opinion on the EU (Spiering, 2004). This may be inaccurate because British
Euroscepticism is constructed out of many opinions, of which the Scottish opinions
are more nuanced (Haesly, 2001). Also, the majority of the 35% Scots who favour
independence of the UK still prefer membership of the EU (Dardanelli, 2005),
presumably because EU membership can help them gaining their independence.
However, Spiering (2004) points out that there are not many studies available that
give insight in the Scottish newspaper market and coverage of EU topics in Scottish
press. Nevertheless, the two editors of the highest circulation quality newspapers in
Scotland expressed that they have always aimed to cover EU topics fairly. For me the
task to find out. In this study, I will hence compare the coverage of EU topics in an
English newspaper and a Scottish newspaper. I will make an attempt to unravel
Euroscepticism in the British media and to assess the extent of Euroscepticism in both
England and Scotland. To do so, I will use the previously set out theories around
Euroscepticism as my methodological framework. Assuming that media are subject to
historical and cultural frameworks (Berkowitz, 1997), I argue that the media in
England and Scotland inhabit explanatory information on Euroscepticism in Britain.

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4. Method and analysis

4.1 Selection of articles


For the empirical part of my research paper, I will assess if the press in Eurosceptic
England portrays the EU differently from the press in Scotland. The English press
which has high circulation numbers throughout the whole of the UK, is often taken to
represent the British press (Daddow, 2004; De Vreese, 2007; Haesly, 2001;
McDowall, 2006; Spiering, 2004). Therefore in this study, I will compare an England-
based newspaper with a Scotland-based newspaper. For my research I chose to select
articles from quality newspapers with the highest circulation that are present in the
LexisNexis database, which are The Guardian as an English-based newspaper and
The Herald as a Scotland-based newspaper. The units for this content analysis are
news articles and opinion articles which are selected from a period of three weeks
from September 27, 2010 to October 17, 2010. I however did not distinguish between
the two kinds of articles, as my point of research is to assess the overall extent of
Euroscepticism in the newspapers. To select the articles, I searched the database by
using the keywords ‘European Union’ and ‘EU’ and selected the 50 most recent
articles, from which 25 were actually useful from The Guardian and 22 from The
Herald. This means the rest of the articles had nothing to do with the EU, or the
keywords just referred to for example job functions of attendants at conferences. To
enlarge my sample in order to raise the reliability of the outcomes, I did a second
similar round of article selection. This time, I used the keywords ‘European
Commission’ and ‘European Parliament’ to find articles in the same period as the first
sample. This led to the selection of nine new articles from The Guardian and five new
articles from The Herald. In total 34 articles from The Guardian and 27 articles from
The Herald were analysed.

4.2 Operationalisation
To answer the research question; “Does the press in Eurosceptic England portray the
EU differently from the press in Scotland?”, using the previously set out theories
concerning Euroscepticism and media representation of the EU, I have set out a
codebook to analyse newspaper articles.

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Prominence of the EU
As set out earlier, Euroscepticism can relate to the EU, its objectives, execution of
those objectives and the future, but in theory it is hard to distinguish evaluations of
one of the three. In order to assess the extent of presence of the EU in an article, I will
therefore take EU objectives, executions and future, without distinguishing them, into
account. For every article, I assess if the EU is central subject of the article, ascribing
value ‘1’ to it, or if it is just mentioned, coded ‘0’. However, I make a distinction
between the segments of the EU that is related to, which are economy, policy, socio-
culture or expansion, coded with value ‘1’ for present relation and ‘0’ for no relation.
These segments do not exclude each other. I also assess if the EU is featured in a
national or foreign news article, whereby value ‘0’ ascribes foreign news and value
‘1’ national news. News from the UK is considered national news in newspapers from
both countries, as Scotland is officially part of the country UK. To explicate this, the
links of the EU to the UK and to Scotland are assessed and coded ‘1’ for a present
link and ‘0’ for no link. The link is present if the objections, executions or
expectations of the EU are in any way set out against the UK or Scotland. I will not
distinguish negative, positive or neutral links, because together with the overall
evaluation of the EU in the article, any link inhibits information concerning
Euroscepticism in itself.

Evaluation of the EU
To measure the evaluation of the EU, for each article the proportion of negative and
positive notes on the EU is calculated, with eventually ascribing value ‘1’ to more
negative, ‘-1’ for more positive and ‘0’ for even or neutral. As an example for
operationalisation of this variable, I used the codebook which also distinguishes
negative, positive and neutral to measure media frames in EU coverage of Schuck et
al. (in press). To decide if a link to the EU is negatively, positively or neutrally made,
I take possible expectations and evaluations into account, i.e. if the EU’s regulations
is supposed to benefit and has benefited the UK. I will also analyse the words used to
describe behaviour of the EU reflecting the tone. For example; descriptions of the EU
‘imposing’ or ‘pushing’ its regulations are considered negative, whereas the UK
embracing EU’s regulations is considered positive. When no clear tone can be
discovered, i.e. ‘the UK takes regulations of the EU into account’, it will be coded ‘0’,
thus neutral.

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As from the theory can be derived, Euroscepticism is grounded on
scientifically and empirically assessed considerations. These considerations led
Sørensen (2008) to develop a typology for Euroscepticism, which is the benchmark
for this study. Each article is subjected to an analysis of possible present
considerations to discover types of Euroscepticism. The distinction is made between
utilitarian, sovereignty-based and democratic types. Utilitarian considerations concern
economic performance and cost-benefit analysis evaluations, sovereignty-based
considerations inhibit more negative issues, like loss of sovereignty and cultural threat
to national identity and democratic considerations concern the democratic
performance of the EU and execution of its objectives and policy issues, as we can see
from the theory these are strongly related. All of the articles are screened on present
considerations, which are coded with value ‘1’ for negative evaluation, ‘-1’ for
positive evaluation and ‘0’ for neutral or absent evaluation.

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5. Results

5.1 Prominence of the EU


Before starting to analyse the results, I checked the variable properties on possible
missing values or false values. The values were all valid, so I started my analysis
without having to rule out any missing values. In this content analysis I researched 34
articles from the British newspaper The Guardian and 27 articles from the Scottish
newspaper The Herald. Of all articles in The Guardian, 44% of the articles are
specifically about the EU, while in 56% of the articles the EU is just mentioned. Of
the articles from The Herald, 33% are about the EU, while in 67% of the articles the
EU is just mentioned. The EU relates in 35% of the articles in The Guardian to
economy, in 41% of the articles to policy, in 29% of the articles to socio-cultural
issues and in none of the articles of The Guardian the EU related to expansion. As for
The Herald, the EU relates in 41% of the articles to economy, in 33% of the articles to
policy, in 15% of the articles to socio-cultural issues and 11% of the articles are about
EU expansion.
As for the orientation of the articles; In The Guardian, 56% of the news is
national, whereas for The Herald, this is 67%. Furthermore, in The Guardian, in 53%
of all the articles a link is made between the EU and the UK. In The Herald, the link
between the EU and the UK is made in 37% of the articles, but in 48% of the articles,
the EU relates to Scotland.

5.2 Evaluation of the EU


Showing from the results is that in 35% of the articles in The Guardian, the EU is
mostly negatively related to. In 47% of the articles, the EU is evaluated neutrally. In
the articles from The Herald, the EU is related to mostly negatively in 15% of the
articles. In 67% of the articles the EU was evaluated neutrally. This brings us to the
present considerations to evaluate the EU present in the articles. In The Guardian,
25% of the articles in which the EU was negatively evaluated are negative on
utilitarian grounds. In The Herald this percentage is 75% of all articles negative about
the EU. As for democratic considerations, it showed that in 50% of the articles from
The Guardian, in which the EU is evaluated negatively, they are negative about the
EU on democratic grounds. In The Herald, this percentage is 25%. The last type of
considerations, namely sovereignty-based considerations, are present in 17% of the

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articles from The Guardian in which the EU is negatively evaluated. None of the
articles in The Herald that evaluated the EU negatively state something negative on
sovereignty grounds. For a visual illustration of these results, see figure 1.

Figure 1 – Present considerations in articles that are negative on the EU.


The

80
70
60
50
Utilitarian
40
Democracy
30
Sovereignty
20
10
0
Guardian Herald

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6. Conclusion

It is not a coincidence that Euroscepticism, which now denotes all negative opinions
on the EU across Europe, was first used in an England-based newspaper. The British
have never been a popular member of the EU, not from their point of view and not
from the continental Europeans’ point of view. The British media that has always
been critical on the EU are said to contribute to this. Because of the lack of nuance in
EU coverage by the media that have the highest circulation through the UK, Scottish,
Welsh and Northern Irish opinions are overshadowed. English media are often taken
to represent the British media and society, while there are some serious indications
that the Scots might be much more nuanced in their EU opinions. As the media from
sociological point of view reflect society, I researched the question; “Does the press in
Eurosceptic England portray the EU differently from the press in Scotland?”
To assess if EU coverage in both newspapers is different, I used theories
around the phenomenon ‘Euroscepticism’ as a frame of reference. Euroscepticism as
it is used today encapsulates all negative feelings in the form of rejection and criticism
towards the European Union as an embodiment of European cooperation. In the
analysis, any kind of negativity against the EU was measured and the numbers show
that The Guardian seems more negative on the EU than The Herald. Not only the
amount of negative links to the EU is higher in The Guardian, The Herald seems to
also be more neutral. Neutral in this sense can be seen as positive, as my frame of
reference is Euroscepticism, in which ‘neutral’ does not mean negative. In general, it
seems that more Scots are positive about European integration because it could
benefit their independence from the UK, which offers a possible explanation for my
findings. Furthermore, the EU in the Scottish newspaper links more to Scotland than
the UK, illustrating the orientation of relation to the EU.
In The Guardian, policy of the EU seems more prominent on the agenda,
whereas in The Herald, the economic performance of the EU seems more prominent.
In addition to this, considerations to be Eurosceptic in The Guardian seem to be
grounded on democratic grounds, concerning execution of democracy and policy. In
The Herald, Euroscepticism seems to be framed in terms of utilitarian considerations,
relating to cost-benefit analyses. These findings might be explained by the Scottish
assumably posing more emphasis on benefits from the EU for their independence
gaining. The English might evaluate the EU more on ‘soft’ predictors, which are

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based on cultural and identity-related grounds and become more important when
cultural issues are more salient in society (De Vreese, Boomgaarden & Semetko,
2008). The seeming difference in EU coverage in an English newspaper and a
Scottish newspaper can also be explained from the high level of competition on the
English newspaper market, which makes the newspapers want to attract the big
public. The content tends to be more sensational (Spiering, 2004; Wilkes & Wring,
2006) and as many Britons already have a strong sense of national identity, the EU is
perfect material to arouse sensation (Spiering, 2004).
Although I found some interesting results, there are some serious limitations
of my research that need to be taken into account. First of all, the amount of articles
used for this research is relatively low, so generalisation to the English or Scottish
press is difficult. However, the results give reason to further research the British press.
I collected all kinds of news stories that had ‘EU’ in it, but as very often the EU was
just mentioned or referred to, I had to subjectively choose which articles to analyse.
Also, the variables in the codebook seemed too interpretative, although the variables
seemed easy to assess when I developed the codebook, especially with theoretical
back-up. For example, assessing what is negative or positive seemed more difficult, so
in the future, a scientific reference to that distinction is necessary. Also, I lost a lot of
meaningful information by turning all the information into data. I suggest that the
delicacy of Euroscepticism needs a more sophisticated research method, especially in
media when one can not steer answers and outcomes, but is dependent on existing
material. A discourse analysis would therefore fit the nature of Euroscepticism better.

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