A Spiral of Euroscepticism: The Media's Fault?
- PDF / 140,667 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 32 Downloads / 227 Views
A Spiral of Euroscepticism: The Media’s Fault? Claes H. de Vreese Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, Amsterdam 1012 CX, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
It is common wisdom in political communication research that the media matter for democratic processes and citizens’ political attitudes. However, we have only limited knowledge about the role of the media in understanding support for European integration and virtually no knowledge about their role in relation to the emergence and consolidation of Euroscepticism. Drawing on experimental data and evidence from panel surveys in two countries, this article demonstrates how news media, by framing Euro-politics as an arena for strategically operating, selfserving politicians, can fuel public cynicism and scepticism. However, this effect is conditional upon the level of strategic news framing and in a situation with limited strategically framed news about the European Union, exposure to news reverses this process and reduces public cynicism. The article demonstrates that a spiral of media-driven Euroscepticism is neither true for all media nor for all individuals. Acta Politica (2007) 42, 271–286. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500186 Keywords: Euroscepticism; media effects; public opinion; political cynicism
Introduction The relevance of understanding public sentiments about European integration has become centre place on the ‘Euro-politics’ agenda. Turnout in European Parliamentary elections is decreasing, Eurosceptic parties are gaining support, and French and Dutch voters rejected the European Union (EU) Constitutional Treaty in 2005. The legitimacy of the integration project is at stake, but no coherent theoretical framework has foreseen and can fully explain the significant rise of Euroscepticism. Previous research on public support for European integration has treated support as a function of several contextualand individual-level factors. Even though several studies stress that information cues provided by the media play a key role in legitimating and shaping public opinion about European integration (Hewstone, 1986; Meyer, 1999; Risse-Kappen et al., 1999), there are only few empirical examples of the link between media content and public opinion (see e.g., De Vreese, 2004; De Vreese and Semetko 2004; Peter, 2004; De Vreese and Boomgaarden, 2005). In this article, previous research is advanced in two ways to highlight the role of the media in shaping citizen’s attitudes towards European integration. First,
Claes H. de Vreese Euroscepticism: The Media’s Fault?
272
it is shown how exposure to specific and different news media content leads to differential changes in attitudes for different individuals. Second, previous research that has mostly looked at support for European integration and the EU in diffuse terms is extended to specifically investigate the role of the news media in affecting public Euroscepticism. The relationships are tested using experimental evidence and panel survey data combined with m
Data Loading...
