Abstract
In the spotlight for some time now, the potential of national parliaments to legitimise EU politics has become even more salient given the growing politicisation and public contestation of EU issues. Their ability to realise this potential depends, however, vitally on citizens being actually aware of parliamentary involvement in EU affairs. Academic as well as political attention has therefore more recently turned to the communication function of parliaments, and here the media play a crucial role. Important is not only whether EU parliamentary affairs are covered in the media, but also <em>who</em> within parliament gets the opportunity to raise European issues in the media. In the context of this thematic issue, the question of media visibility is of particular interest with regard to Eurosceptic parliamentary party groups and their members. Do Eurosceptics in parliament get to dominate parliamentary EU news in the media and thus to take ownership of EU issues—or do the media freeze parliamentary Eurosceptics out of the coverage? Both would seriously undermine the legitimising potential of national parliaments. The article therefore analyses to what extent we can find a visibility bias in the print media coverage of Eurosceptic parliamentary actors and explores the factors that contribute to such bias. For the analysis, it draws on a quantitative dataset of all newspaper articles covering parliamentary EU affairs in six member states (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Poland and the UK) over a period of four years (2010 to 2013).
Highlights
The 2016 referendum in the UK on leaving the EU and its aftermath sent shock waves through the Union, it has brought home two very uncomfortable truths
I distinguish between two sets of news factors or values that potentially impact media bias: 1) news values related directly to the object of coverage, i.e., Eurosceptic parliamentary actors; and 2) news values related to expectations of the addressees of the coverage, i.e., the readership
Taggart and Szczerbiak (2002, p. 7) famously distinguish between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Euroscepticism. The former refers to principled opposition to the EU that might be associated with demands to leave the EU or halt further integration, the latter to a more qualified opposition to specific EU policies or institutional choices, and Eurosceptic positions can be located on a continuum between the two, an approach followed by the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES; e.g., Bakker et al, 2015; for a discussion of conceptualisations and measurements of party Euroscepticism see Vasilopoulou, 2017)
Summary
The 2016 referendum in the UK on leaving the EU and its aftermath sent shock waves through the Union, it has brought home two very uncomfortable truths. Various studies have linked the coverage of EU news in the media to public perceptions of the EU (Schuck & De Vreese, 2006; Vliegenthart, Schuck, Boomgaarden, & De Vreese, 2008; for an excellent discussion see Galpin & Trenz, 2017) as well as turnout and vote choice in the European Parliament (EP) elections (Van Spanje & De Vreese, 2014) or in EU-related domestic referendums (Elenbaas & De Vreese, 2008) This raises the question to what extent the media cover parliamentary engagement in EU affairs more generally, and who within parliament gets the opportunity to raise European issues in the media, to explain procedures and to attribute responsibility. The problem is, to define what should be taken as the benchmark for a balanced coverage of political actors or groups
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