More power, less influence: European union actors in media debates on fiscal policy after the eurocrisis

ABSTRACT

Stronger European Union (EU) competencies come with greater media presence, according to existing cross-sectional comparisons. While presence comes with the power to influence public discourse, we know little about how it affects the overall tone of public discourse. This article investigates the effect of the empowerment of EU institutions on media presence and the tone of debate in the EU. It does this through an original claims analysis of newspaper articles in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Poland during the height of the Euro crisis (2011–2012), the Greek bailout crisis (2015), and the Italian budget crisis (2018). EU media presence indeed increases following empowerment. However, this does not result in a more pro-European debate, because pro-European national voices are crowded out. While this does not affect the desirability of austerity, it does harden Eurosceptic public discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Claims analysis
• fiscal policy
• European union
• mass media

Acknowledgments

This research was carried out as part of the RECONNECT project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770142. Data and codebook are freely available at the Norwegian Center for Research Data (NSD) in adherence to FAIR principles, doi: 10.18712/NSD-NSD3047-V2. This article owes a debt of gratitude to Anna Gora, who coordinated the RECONNECT representative claims analysis data gathering, as well as the involved coders. I would like to thank Anna Brigevich, Carlos Closa, Michael Geary, Carine Germond, and Nadja Kratow for useful feedback on earlier versions. This article reflects only the author’s view. The European Commission Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2022.2115485

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770142.