Utilitarian, identity or cue-rationality mechanisms do not fully explain citizens' attitudes toward the EU. How do people form their opinions? Debates and policies feed back into the perceptions of the public (Wolfe et al. 2013). How are the informational environments European citizens live in? Quality newspapers are leading agenda-setters, powerful mediators of policy outputs (Boomgaarden et al. 2011, Walgrave and Van Aelst 2006). I inquire whether and how EU legitimacy is affected by the ways in which the mass media portray European affairs in the national domains, particularly in times of crises.
I analyse a sample of 3.000 claims published in 15 national newspapers of France, the UK, and Spain (LIVEWHAT project) during the economic crisis/post-crisis period (2008-2014). Applying computer-assisted quantitative text analyses, I assess the variations in salience, tone, and polarity by country and over time. The economic crisis affected countries differently, leading to EU financial assistance, policy implementations and particular institutional set-ups (Saurugger 2016, Pisany-Ferry et al. 2013). Tone and salience in news coverage matter beyond specific economic conditions (Soroka et al. 2015, Baumgartner and Mahoney 2008). Have EU policies and interventions been legitimised by positive assessments or contested? How consistent are media coverage patterns across countries and over time? How stable within each country? If any, why and under which conditions do variations arise?
Decisions taken at the supranational level result complex and hinder political accountability and responsibility assignment in the EU (Hobolt and Tilley 2014). The media play a central role linking policy-making and the public, crucial to legitimate polity, policies, and politics – even more during crises (Trenz 2004, Jones 2009, Soroka et al. 2015). Public opinion reacts to economic changes. The particular dynamics of European policy-making during the crisis, with extraordinary political interventions, exposed the EU to great public visibility in the national domains.
