European identity and media effects: a quantitative comparative analysis

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 28 member states with more than 500 million citizens whose legitimate existence and further integration amongst others depend on if its citizens feel a sense of collective European identification. The literature on the topic suggests that exposure to media plays a vital role in making people feel such a sense of collective identification. Accordingly, in this thesis, the principal object is the analysis of direct media effect on people’s sense of European identity. The main empirical question of the study is: What kind of effects the media use has on European identity? This thesis addresses this relevant question by carrying out a theoretically grounded analysis of the relationship between European identity and the different effects of media exposure in various contexts. The study draws on the Social Identity Theory (SIT), and the findings of social psychologists’ findings which situate European identity a concept that corresponds to an individuals’ subjective assignment to a collective and his affective and evaluative attachment to this collective. --- The results of the study indicate that the EU has managed to instill a sense of European identity among its citizens this feeling, however, varies across different regions of the continent. The analyses also reveal that exposure to the media positively affects European identity. Nevertheless, such an effect is dependent on people’s pre-existing attitudes towards the EU and if they perceive the media to be neutral and credible. Moreover, the study also confirms the positive effects of preferring political news from both online and traditional media on European identity. --- The research in this dissertation aims to further the scholarly debate on the topic while emphasizing the direct relationship between the media and European identity, an issue which has largely been overlooked in the scholarship on EU attitudes.