En‘vision’ing Europe's crisis: Intertextuality in news coverage of the Eurozone crisis in Chinese, Indian and Russian press

Abstract

European political communication studies are marked by a lack of attention to the visual. Yet there is a need to go beyond strictly textual analyses towards an understanding that visual images also play an important role in constructing a European Union (EU) identity both within and outside the Union's borders. This analysis explores the relationship between visual and textual imagery of the EU in international news discourses; a comprehensive intertextual approach which remains an under-researched perspective in studies of visual imagery in general. The study focuses on the intertextual imagery of the EU and its economic crisis in three ‘emerging’ powers; China, India and Russia. The three states are among the main poles in a multi-polar world – an emerging order characterized by power shifts and increased interdependence. In this new global design, the ‘emerging’ powers compete with the EU and USA, and contemplate their own responses to the EU's economic crisis, as well as calculate its effects. This study explores those responses as presented in the leading business papers of each country and asks how the relationship between the visual and textual imagery of the EU contributes to raising visibility and creating cognitive and emotional responses to its on-going crisis.