Fragmented Narratives Across the North-South Divide: Macroeconomic Indicators and the Differentiated Construction of the Eurozone Crisis

Economic crises are some of the most significant events of recent decades, although as constructivist and discursive studies have consistently highlighted, these should be seen as socially constructed instead of observer-independent phenomena. However, little attention has been put on the specific role played by macroeconomic indicators in the construction of economic crises, despite being fundamental framing devices in narratives about these. This article provides insights into this relationship, analysing the coverage and co-evolution of macroeconomic indicators and economic ‘crisis’ in the media. To do so, we examine the case of the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis, using a novel dataset collected via an extensive media content analysis across four European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain), focusing on national narratives of the same event across the North-South divide. We then provide a longitudinal analysis of the media salience of 5 key macroeconomic indicators (‘public deficit’, ‘public debt’, ‘GDP’, ‘risk premium’, and ‘unemployment’) over time, and use multiple regression analysis to unpack the differentiated role of indicators in the construction of economic crisis in a comparative perspective. After also controlling for Greece’s salience and for secular time trends, we find a strong correlation between media coverage of specific indicators and of framings of ‘crisis’; however, we also find significant cross-national differences in which indicators are more salient and in how much they are correlated with national framings of crisis, with Northern media focusing mostly on ‘public debt’ and paying special attention to Greece, and with Southern media instead emphasising other indicators, particularly ‘risk premium’. We conclude by arguing that public understandings of crisis are likely mediated to a large extent by national context and the creditor-debtor division, while simultaneously pointing to how the problematic North-South divide in terms of media coverage and framings can affect public understandings of a shared crisis.