Can Euroscepticism Contribute to a European Public Sphere? The Europeanization of Media Discourses on Euroscepticism across Six Countries

Abstract

This study compares the media discourses on euroscepticism in 2014 in six countries (the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Sweden and Denmark). We assessed the extent to which the mass media's reporting of euroscepticism indicates the Europeanization of public spheres. Using a mixed-methods approach combining latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modelling and qualitative coding, we find that approximately 70 per cent of print articles mentioning ‘euroscepticism’ or ‘eurosceptic’ are framed in a non-domestic (i.e., European) context. In five of the six cases studied, articles exhibiting a European context are strikingly similar in content, with the British case as the exception. However, coverage of British euroscepticism drives Europeanization in other member states. Bivariate logistic regressions further reveal three macro-level structural variables that significantly correlate with a Europeanized media discourse: the newspaper type (tabloid or broadsheet), the presence of a strong domestic eurosceptical party and relationship to the EU budget (net contributor or receiver of EU funds).