Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
4.2 Operationalisation p. 8
5. Results p. 11
6. Conclusion p. 13
2
1. Introduction
3
2. Euroscepticism throughout Europe
4
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).
5
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.
6
3. European media and Euroscepticism
7
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.
8
4. Method and analysis
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.
9
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.
10
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.
11
5. Results
12
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.
80
70
60
50
Utilitarian
40
Democracy
30
Sovereignty
20
10
0
Guardian Herald
13
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
14
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.
15
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