Can Euroscepticism Contribute to a European Public Sphere? The Europeanization of Media Discourses about Euroscepticism across Six Countries

TL;DR

This study investigates how media coverage of Euroscepticism across six European countries reflects the Europeanization of public spheres, revealing significant cross-national similarities and factors influencing this process.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of media discourses on Euroscepticism across multiple countries, highlighting the Europeanization of media narratives and identifying structural factors associated with it.

Findings

70% of articles mention Euroscepticism in a European context

Europeanized coverage is similar across five countries, except the UK

Media Europeanization is influenced by newspaper type, Eurosceptic parties, and EU funding status

Abstract

This study compares the media discourses about Euroscepticism in 2014 across six countries (United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark). We assess the extent to which the mass media's reporting of Euroscepticism indicates the Europeanization of public spheres. Using a mixed-methods approach combining LDA topic modeling and qualitative coding, we find that approximately 70 per cent of print articles mentioning "Euroscepticism" or "Eurosceptic" are framed in a non-domestic (i.e. European) context. In five of the six cases studied, articles exhibiting a European context are strikingly similar in content, with the British case as the exception. However, coverage of British Euroscepticism drives Europeanization in other Member States. Bivariate logistic regressions further reveal three macro-level structural variables that significantly correlate with a Europeanized media discourse: newspaper type (tabloid or broadsheet), presence of a strong Eurosceptic party, and relationship to the EU budget (net contributor or receiver of EU funds).