Who Will Fix the Economy? Expectations and Trust in the European Institutions

The chapter is based on data from a large-scale internationally comparative research project that examined how Europeans understand the challenges facing the euro and workings of the EU and ECB through the news media of their countries. In carrying out the research, more than 10,000 articles from 40 newspapers in ten countries were analysed. These included the leading business/financial paper, the leading conservative and liberal papers, and the leading tabloid in each country. If the press in different countries has different views on European institutions, the most salient result of our analysis is that there is an evident intra-country homogeneity; that is, all the coded newspapers belonging to the same country share similar attitudes. What emerges as predominant is the feeling that the way of looking at the EU is still forged by domestic predispositions and circumstances and, therefore, all the same-country newspapers tend to align around some general views. In other words, our results do not offer any evidence of the existence of a supranational European public media sphere forged by some types of newspapers or by ideological blocks.