News, Symbols, and European Identity

Abstract

It is now time to examine whether, and to what extent, the news on Europe conveyed by the media, and the symbols of Europe generated by institutions have the expected impact on the level of European identity of citizens. This chapter also considers whether this effect is the same on the civic and cultural components of European identity. The model tested consequently considers the impact of news on Europe and symbols of the European Union on the general, civic, and cultural aspects of citizens' European identity. The findings are presented both for the whole population studied in the experiment and for each country sample. The chapter then focuses more specifically on the various surprises, shortcomings, and unexplained findings of my results and tries to propose a more critical view of what they might tell us about political persuasion and the potential influence of political institutions, and the mass media on citizens' perceptions and identities. It also discusses the comparative dimension of the models, and the insight added by the cross-national comparisons.