Complementing, competing, or co-operating? Exploring newspapers’ portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments in EU affairs

Abstract

The paper explores newspapers’ portrayals of the European Parliament and national parliaments (NPs) in European Union (EU) affairs. To understand underlying perceptions of journalists, it takes public parliamentary activities and looks at their influence on parliaments’ news visibility in Finland, Germany and the UK in routine periods in 2011 and 2012. This is done against the background that parliaments, regarded as ultimate legitimisers of state power, depend on the mass media to reach their citizenry. However, journalists follow their own agenda in publishing parliamentary news. In this regard, they may highlight the complementarity, competition or cooperation of parliaments in the EU’s unique multi-tier environment. Overall, our results suggest that NPs correspond stronger with newsmakers’ anticipation of readership interest. In addition, findings seem to support the assumption that parliaments in the EU are mostly perceived as complementary, separate legislative branches in EU decision-making.

What Happens in Parliament Stays in Parliament? Newspaper Coverage of National Parliaments in EU Affairs

“…Koopmans () even found that the visibility of the German Bundestag in the media coverage of EU monetary policy actually increased significantly in recent years. In addition, a comparative study by Eisele () suggests that, outside of EP elections, national parliaments' EU activities are more relevant for the media than those of the EP.…”

A window of opportunity? The relevance of the rotating European Union presidency in the public eye

“…Media salience of the EU presidency, that is, its visibility in news media coverage, may be read as an indicator of a news item has fulfilled the standards of newsworthiness. The domestication and proximity of news are found to be important news values overall (Harcup and O'Neill, 2017), and for EU news in particular, a national angle as well as geographical proximity is found to prevail (Eisele, 2017;Heidenreich et al, 2022;Walter, 2016). We, therefore, expect presidency coverage to be shaped by these news values as well.…”

The Political Attitudes of Divided European Citizens

“…This broadening of the political horizon presupposes a cross-border, mass media communication and information flow because, without this, it would be more difficult for people to assess life in other countries and use appropriate comparisons in the formation of political opinions. The existence of such a cross-border communication space within the EU has been proven by numerous research projects (Pfetsch et al 2006;Lahusen 2009;Statham and Trenz 2013;Zschache 2016;Eisele 2017;Segesten and Bossetta 2019). The evaluations in the course of this study have also confirmed these findings, although the focus was even more on the question of whether public debates in the mass media are indeed horizontally open and interrelated between the individual member states.…”

“…The same is true for research about public discourses within the mass media, which have provided insights that are particularly important when analysing "public opinion". These studies have been interested in identifying the extent to which the public spheres at the national level have been "Europeanised" in regard to actors, issues and events linked to the EU (Gerhards 2001;Trenz 2004;Machill, Beiler and Fischer 2006;Brüggemann and Schulz-Forberg 2009;Eisele 2017; Caiani and Guerra 2017; Segesten and Bossetta 2019). The focus was primarily the question of whether the discussions reproduced in the national mass media are at all European and thus open across borders.…”