Europeanization of national public spheres? Cross-national media debates about the European Union's socio-economic strategy

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the Europeanization of media coverage of the European Union's (EU) socio-economic strategy, which is a crucial building block for developing a European Public Sphere. As the EU level increasingly influences public policy in member states, there should correspondingly be a more intense and visible media debate with attention for EU-level and cross-national policies and developments. On the basis of a content analysis (2000–2010) in Denmark, France, Poland and the UK, we find that media attention for the EU's growth and jobs strategy is limited, that it does not increase over time and that it is mainly driven by the EU agenda. There are cross-national similarities in thematic focus and EU-level actors are omnipresent in reporting on the strategy. Finally, we find that coverage of the strategy has a transnational dimension in all four cases, with reference to peer countries in terms of benchmarking and reporting on criticism and advice to member states. This criticism is more often diffuse than aimed at specific member states. Therefore, we conclude that media coverage of the EU's socio-economic strategy is Europeanized, but that it remains a debate by and for EU-interested actors.

KEYWORDS:

• European public sphere
• compensatory Europeanization
• media
• news
• Denmark
• France
• Poland
• UK

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Christilla Roederer-Rynning, who has helped us with the development of the database, which was the basis for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The following search terms were translated by native speakers and used to retrieve the articles: Lisbon strategy, Lisbon agenda, Lisbon process, Lisbon programme, Lisbon objectives, Lisbon targets, Lisbon goal, ‘Jobs and growth strategy' and Europe, ‘Jobs and grown strategy' and EU, EU growth strategy, European growth strategy, ‘spring summit' and EU, ‘spring summit' and Europe, ‘march summit' and Europe, ‘march summit' and EU, Lisbon European council, European benchmarking, EU benchmarking, EU and flexicurity, Europe and flexicurity, ‘most competitive economy' and EU, ‘most competitive economy' and Lisbon, ‘most competitive economy' and Europe. Europe 2020 was also included as a search term in the four languages. For the two Polish newspapers, articles were retrieved from their archives which are directly accessible through their websites.

2. The number of articles in left- and right-wing newspapers is combined, since the visibility showed similar developments within countries.

Additional information

Funding

The development of the database was funded by the Department of Political Science of the University of Southern Denmark.