Schweizer Konstruktionen europäischer Identität im Vergleich. Eine Analyse nationaler Mediendiskurse zu Erweiterungen und Vertiefungen der EU

Lost in uncertainty: How the Euro crisis affected European identity constructions in national media discourses

“…Concerning the construction of belonging and in contrast to previous studies (Eilders and Lichtenstein, 2015;Lichtenstein, 2016), all analyzed countries showed a low level in their sense of belonging to the EU. This is particularly noteworthy with regard to the frame of the EU as a community united by political values.…”

“…The coding of frames was based on a comprehensive catalogue of 28 sub frames that were later aggregated into eight main frames. The catalogue of frames is deduced from the literature on European identity and has already proved to be appropriate in previous content analyses (Lichtenstein, 2014;2016;Lichtenstein and Eilders, 2015). 2 Three main frames refer to conflicts in EU politics and entail two identity options each.…”

“…Between the three countries, two lines of conflict characterize the discourse on European integration (Lichtenstein and Eilders, 2015;Lichtenstein, 2016). First, German and French support for the EU as a strong politically integrated federal state stands in sharp contrast to the UK's preference for the EU as a confederation of sovereign but cooperating nation states.…”

“…Against the backdrop of the considerations on the impact of the Euro crisis on the perceptions of the EU, this article aims to investigate how the three central EU countries Germany, France and the UK differed in their general interpretations of the EU and of the relation between member states and the EU during the Euro crisis. In recent research on different perspectives of the EU, the framing approach has proved to be very suitable to capture the multifaceted picture that is constructed of the EU and of the relationship between member state and EU (Dı´ez Medrano, 2003;Lichtenstein, 2014Lichtenstein, , 2016Lichtenstein and Eilders, 2015). This article therefore follows the notion that interpretations of the EU and of togetherness with other EU countries may be conceptualized as frames of European identity.…”

“…First and foremost is the idea of the EU as a community of political values associated with democracy and peace. Further, it has been shown that identity discourses react to political events (Lichtenstein, 2014(Lichtenstein, , 2016Lichtenstein and Eilders, 2015). In the context of the referenda on the EU Constitutional Treaty in 2005 and on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, frames on political integration became especially prominent.…”