Newspaper Discourse and Public Spheres

Abstract

This final empirical chapter explores the construction and reiteration of journalistic messages with respect to their domestic focus and their institutional EU and broader European content. The content analysis conducted here concentrates not only on the prevalence of EU-related print content, but also, more importantly, redraws the dynamic treatment of the integration-based independent variables over the twelve-year period. Derived from selected print media in each of the case countries, representative quotes reveal not only the extent of coverage of EU and European issues as part of the public (identity) discourse claim laid out in the third hypothesis, but also how the salience of these measures has changed over time in quantitative and qualitative terms, thereby reflecting the supply side of public perception as part of the domestic reception of European integration. Approaches pointing to the media’s potential as transmitter of transnationalism are fairly novel and have received more attention only in the past few years (Wessler, 2008; Hurrelmann et al., 2009). Taken together, the span of observation, the breadth of sources, and the linkages between those, as well as the quantitative and qualitatively examined variables, support this methodology as a way to discern the print discourse in European public spheres.