Towards Europeanization
A comparative content analysis of the 2004, 2009 and 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections in the Catalan and the Spanish press
Adriana Díaz Martín-Zamorano Student number: 10831657
Erasmus Mundus Master’s Journalism, Media and Globalisation Graduate School of Communication, University of Amsterdam
Supervised by Yphtach Lelkes 26th June 2015
Acknowledgments
Dr. Yphtach Lelkes for his constant supervision, help and availability through the whole process of the Master thesis.
Dr. Andreas Schuck for his thorough feedback on the operationalisation of the measures as well as his insight on the codebook.
Dr. Katjana Gattermann for her valuable comments on how to improve the codebook. Oscar Güell for providing his Spanish native speakers skills to make this research reliable. Nathaniel Kaar for dedicating his time to proofread the present paper.
Abstract
The present study analyses the news coverage of the European Parliament (EP) elections in Catalan and Spanish newspapers over a ten year period. Previous studies have examined the dissimilarities in the news coverage of the EU across different Member States without fully taking into consideration that there might as well be variations within a country. Hence, aiming to find out to what extent the coverage of the EP elections differed between the media in a region (Catalonia) and the state it belongs to (Spain), a content analysis was carried out through the four most popular Catalan and Spanish newspapers respectively in the week leading up to the elections in 2004, 2009 and 2014. The results of this research show that both Catalan and Spanish outlets follow the same pattern of coverage during European elections as those in most other European countries; with increased visibility of the elections across time and yet limited Europeanization of this coverage. However, the core outcome of the study shows that the level of Europeanization is significantly higher in Catalan newspapers than in Spanish outlets, in spite of sharing the same amount of visibility. The findings of this paper are discussed in light of the possible role of the regions in the build-up of a European Public Sphere (EPS).
Keywords: media content analysis, Europeanization, Catalan newspapers, Spanish newspapers, European public sphere.
List of abbreviations
CAT Catalonia
CiU Convergència i Unió
EC European Commission
ElPa El País
ElPe El Periódico
EM El Mundo
EP European Parliament
EPS European Public Sphere
ES Spain
EU European Union
LV La Vanguardia
MEP Member of the European Parliament
MS Member State of the European Union
PP Partido Popular
PSC Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya
PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español
Introduction
In the last years, the autonomy and capacity of central governments in the European Union (EU) to control policy-making has been significantly reduced as a consequence of two main processes: the shift of some national competences to supranational EU bodies and the transfer of some powers from the state to sub-state political structures (Hoppe, 2007). Therefore, this multi-level political system has given new opportunities for political units below the state to increase their autonomy (Hoppe, 2007) and potentially play an active role in the processes of European integration as some of the most positive parties towards the EU (Nagel, 2004; Hoppe, 2007).
Acknowledging the role of the media in influencing processes of European integration and Europeanization (Slatta, 2006), the purpose of this study is to explore the possible role of the regions in the build-up of European integration and a European Public Sphere (EPS) by assessing the differences and similarities in the coverage of the news on the European Union (EU) between a region (Catalonia) and the state it belongs to (Spain). Under the research question, “To what extent did the coverage of the 2004, 2009 and 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections in the Catalan press differed from the Spanish press?”, this study will analyse and compare the coverage of the EP elections in Catalan and Spanish newspapers over a ten year period with a focus visibility and Europeanization.
Several previous researchers have looked into the coverage of EU news and discussed the role of the media in the construction of a European Public Sphere, understood as a shared arena of debate of European politics involving citizens, national and European institutions and the media (Kleinen-von-Königslöw, 2012). In this process, the media could play a strong role in building up an effective EPS, which could potentially diminish the acclaimed democratic deficit of the EU by bringing citizens closer to European institutions.
When studying the coverage of the European Union, cross-national studies have revealed that there are different patterns across Member States (de Vreese, 2001; Peter, Semetko & de Vreese, 2003; Peter & de Vreese, 2004; Peter, Lauf & Semetko, 2004; de Vreese, Banducci, Semetko & Boomgaarden, 2006). That is why, assuming that the coverage might differ from country to country, the purpose of this research is to identify possible differences in the coverage of EU news between a country (Spain) and a region within this state with distinctive identity features (Catalonia). In this sense, the present study is in line with previous comparative research on the news about the EU, but it also provides an original approach by combining this general standpoint of studying EU coverage with a more nuanced point of view focusing on the differences within a state instead of comparing countries.
Moreover, this research looks across time and compares the coverage of the 2004, 2009 and 2014 European elections to point out possible dissimilarities over this ten year period, bearing in mind that (a) the Spanish economic crisis started in 2008 (b) the Catalan secessionist movement has intensified since 2012. Hence, the coverage of the European elections might have differed in ten years with respect to these changing economic and political situations.
The study investigates two types of hypotheses related to visibility and Europeanization. On the one hand, in line with previous studies, I will pose general
observations about the coverage of the European elections in both the Catalan and Spanish press including the factor over time. Along this set of hypotheses, I will argue that whilst visibility of the EP elections in the media has gradually increased during this period, the degree of Europeanization is still limited.
On the other hand, the second type of hypotheses will contrast the potential
dissimilarities in this coverage between Catalan and Spanish outlets, particularly in the 2014 European elections. The study shows that the latest EP elections were more visible and more
Europeanized in the Catalan press than in the Spanish press. This is further supported by literature that shows that, both on a political and societal levels, Europe’s stateless nations such as Catalonia are likely to be remarkably positive about the EU (Hooghe & Marks, 2004; Nagel, 2004; Hoppe, 2007) and tend to play an active role in European integration (Malloy, 1995).
The outcome will allow us to determine whether the coverage of EU news can also differ in a region within a state and not only between countries. The results will be discussed in light of the construction of an EPS and the role of the regions in developing European integration. If the results of the present research display significant differences between Catalan and Spanish newspapers, the potential role of sub-state political units in constructing a European public sphere and in enhancing European integration would be strengthened. In the recent years, both the Catalan political parties and the civil society’s discourse has been said to be Europeanized (Giordano & Roller, 2002; Bourne, 2014). Thus if this phenomenon is also present in the media, it should be significant to the three main groups of actors in modern mass democracies; citizens, politicians and the media itself. However, if relevant disparities are not spotted between Catalan and Spanish outlets, the contribution of the regions to European processes should be questioned.
Theoretical framework
Still second-order elections?
The European Parliament elections have typically been characterized for a low
salience in the media (Gerhards, 2000, as cited in Risse, 2003). This is generally attributed to the fact that European elections have been regarded as second-order elections due to the idea that there is less at stake than in the national elections (Reif & Schmitt, 1980). Reif & Schmitt (1980) found that the EP elections fit in the definition of second-order elections because they
are defined by lower levels of participation, first-order government parties lose support in a cyclical way and small parties get a higher support than they would in first-order elections.
After more than twenty years, Schmitt (2005) has revisited the second-order theory to see if it could still apply to the European elections and in his analysis the model seems to persist with differences between old Western member countries and the new post-communist Member States in the 2004 EP elections. For instance, abstentions were remarkably high, the losses of government parties did not follow a cyclical pattern and small forces did not perform significantly better as expected in the new Eastern countries. Nevertheless, Schmitt (2005) has observed that the reason for these differences probably lies on “the nature of party alignments in the post-communist democracies” (Schmitt, 2005, p. 666), meaning that after some years the second-order model could also be applicable to the new Member States.
However, more recently, the second-order elections theory has been challenged by scholars like Corbett (2014), who claims that factors, such as the rise of powers of the European Parliament after the Lisbon Treaty, the increased visibility of the EU in the media due to the economic crisis or the change of president within the European Commission, might make the second-order model no longer pertinent to the EP elections. Hence, Corbett (2014) observes that European elections should still be regarded as second-order in some ways, since they still appear as less important and distant to citizens, but they might be gaining political importance and the 2014 EP elections may have set a precedent for the future. Keeping this in mind and acknowledging that previous studies (de Vreese et al., 2006; Boomgaarden et al., 2013) have showed that salience of the European elections has augmented in more recent elections as well as considering that the economic crisis started severely hitting Spain in 2008, the first hypothesis of this research states that:
H1: The visibility of the EP elections has gradually increased from 2004 to 2014 both in the Catalan and the Spanish press.
Limited Europeanization: a stumbling block for a European public sphere
The European elections have not only been referred to as second-order elections due to their low prominence in the media, but also for the domestic focus rather than European both in the campaigns and in the media (de Vreese et al., 2006). With this in mind, the EP elections as second-order elections contributes to the purported democratic deficit of the European Union, defined as the distance in the linkage between European voters and the decision-making powers within the EU (Norris, 1997). Some researchers, such as Moravcsik (2004), have opposed the idea of the EU lacking any type of democratic participation or
accountability by rejecting the statement that power has shift to the executive, but the large majority of scholars seem to agree upon the alleged lack of relevance of the European Parliament, the absence of direct channels to elect the executive, the existence of distanced institutions from the citizens and the lack of truly European elections (Follesdal & Hix, 2006; Corbett, 2014).
In light of this discussion, de Vreese (2002) has pointed out that the visibility of the EP elections in the news and the occurrence of EU actors in the coverage are a required condition for democratic politics. In this sense, in order to diminish the democratic deficit of the EU, a European Public Sphere or a shared space of debate of European politics linking citizens and national and European institutions (Kleinen-von-Königslöw, 2012), where the media plays a key role, has been said to contribute to the legitimacy of the EU institutions (de Vreese, 2007). In other words, as defined by Habermas (2001), a EPS is “a network that gives citizens of all member states an equal opportunity to take part in an encompassing process of focused political communication” (Habermas, 2001, p.17). There are two ways of perceiving a EPS, as explained by Adam (2014) either as a pan-European public sphere or as a
Europeanization of national public sphere. On the one hand, a pan-EPS is mostly developed by pan-European media and therefore it still remains small and elite-focused (Adam, 2014). On the other hand, a certain Europeanization of national public spheres, understood as the change in the national political communicative space represented by national media outlets, in a way that enables the construction of a EPS (Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2012) has been
detected with a certainly increased visibility of EU actors and topics across time (Boomgaarden, Vliegenthart, de Vreese & Shuck, 2010).
In line with this definition of Europeanization of European public spheres, Koopmans and Erbe (2004) identify two levels of Europeanization: vertical Europeanization and
horizontal Europeanization. Vertical Europeanization consists of communicative linkages established between the national and the purely European level, in which national actors address European actors and/or makes claims on European topics, or in which European actors intervene in national policies and public debates in the name of European regulations and common interests. Horizontal Europeanization consists of communicative linkages between different EU Member States, meaning when media in one country covers the debates and contestation in another Member States, either establishing a connection between the two countries or otherwise.
In spite of the increased visibility of the European elections, papers analysing the coverage of the EP elections have revealed that news about the European elections are still mostly dominated by domestic actors rather than EU actors (de Vreese et al., 2006), and domestic issues still prevail in European election campaigns and media coverage (Corbett, 2014). Thus, it is reasonable to expect in our study that this will also be the case of the coverage of the EP elections in the Catalan and in the Spanish press, both in terms of actors and topics. In this sense, the predominance of domestic actors and topics represent a
stumbling block for the construction of a functioning European public sphere.
H2: The degree of Europeanization of the coverage of the 2004, 2009 and the 2014 European elections in the Catalan and Spanish media is limited, both in terms of vertical and horizontal Europeanization.
The case of Catalonia: A Europeanized breakaway region
Despite generally limited Europeanization in the coverage of European elections, cross-national studies have identified different patterns in covering EU news across Member States (de Vreese, 2001; Peter, Semetko & de Vreese, 2003; Peter & de Vreese, 2004; Peter, Lauf & Semetko, 2004; de Vreese et al., 2006). Recent research (Schuck & de Vreese, 2011; Boomgaarden et al, 2013) has tried to provide explanations for variations across countries and over time, in the coverage of EU events such as the European elections. On the one hand, aiming to explain cross-national dissimilarities in the coverage of the 2009 EP elections, Schuck & de Vreese (2011) found out that the visibility and the degree of “Europeanness” of the coverage was higher in countries with higher EU public support, with no other election taking place at the same time and/or geographically located closer to Brussels. The same study (2011) also ascertained that newspapers are more Europeanized than TV channels. On the other hand, Boomgaarden et al. (2013) have determined that the position of a country’s elite is an additional factor to give explanations to the “Europeanness” of the news, meaning that the more negative about the EU the political elite of a Member State is, the less European the coverage is (or vice versa).
The abovementioned observations have been employed to explain differences in cross-national coverage of EU affairs, but they might be applicable to detect variations between a state (Spain) and a region within the country with distinctive political, societal and cultural differences (Catalonia). Catalonia possesses “all the features needed for what historians consider a nation, a common language, culture and historical background” (Madaula, 2012, p.
36). That is why, certain sectors of the Catalan society have always been keen on defending a sovereign state outside of Spain. Over the past decade Catalonia has witnessed a significant rise of the support for the secession of the region from Spain. While in 2009 only about 15% of the Catalan population defended the independence of the region (CEO, 2009), by the end of 2014 most opinion polls show that around 45% of Catalan citizens would like to break away from Spain (CEO, 2014). Concurrently and possibly as a consequence of the increase in support for independence, the turnout in the 2014 European elections increased by almost 11% in Catalonia whilst it decreased by 1% in Spain (324.cat, 2014; Parlamento Europeo, 2014). Bearing in mind that Banducci and Semetko (2003, as cited in de Vreese et al., 2006) found a correlation between visibility and turnout and stated that greater visibility of
European campaigns is linked to higher turnout in European parliamentary elections, it is expected in terms of comparative visibility that:
H3: The 2014 EP elections were more visible in the Catalan press than in the Spanish press.
In spite of this conflictual setting, what seems striking is that studies have revealed that some of Europe’s stateless nations, such as Catalonia, belong to some of the more enthusiastic supporters of European integration in their respective states (Nagel, 2004) and tend to be more positive about the European Union (EU) (Hoppe, 2007). On a political level, in the context of construction of the European project, Catalans have been among “the most active and influential regional elites” (Malloy, 1995, p. 1), considering that some of its strong political figures have been notably keen on European integration and have taken up leadership in some European regional organisations (e.g. EU Committee of the Regions) (Malloy, 1995), such as Pasqual Maragall (PSC) or Jordi Pujol (CiU). As posed by Nagel (2004), “to be European (and more European than the Spaniards) has always been one of the distinctive marks of Catalanism” (Nagel, 2004, p. 61). It is also important to underline that in the history of democratic Spain, the Catalan government has been ruled for 28 years by the same party,
the centre-right party Convergència i Unió (CiU), which has traditionally defended pro-Europeanism as an integral part of its strategy of modernizing the Spanish state (Giordano & Roller, 2002). On a societal level, people with multiple identities, such as the Catalan society, are more likely to show support towards the EU, according to Hooghe and Marks’ theory (2004) about the implications of national and exclusive identities. Therefore, considering all these annotations, the fourth hypothesis states:
H4: The coverage of the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections is more Europeanized in the Catalan newspapers than in the Spanish outlets.
Recently, and for the most part coinciding with the rise of support for the secession of Catalonia from Spain from 2012 onwards, scholars have identified an Europeanization of the discourse of Catalan political parties and civil society (Giordano & Roller, 2002; Bourne, 2014). More concretely, the nationalists who are in favour of an independent Catalonia outside of Spain “have always stressed their Europeanness” (Nagel, 2004, p. 57), having organised pro-independence demonstrations under clearly European themes (e.g. “Catalonia, a new European state”). Consequently, it is expected that the level of Europeanization in Catalan outlets has augmented over time, especially in the 2014 EP elections coinciding with the boost of the Catalan independence movement.
H5: The degree of Europeanization of the coverage of the European elections in Catalan newspapers has gradually increased from 2004 to 2014.
Taking into consideration that stateless nations’ politicians, especially regional nationalist parties, seem to perceive the European Union “as an alternative institutional channel to promote their objectives and as an example to follow of socioeconomic and political modernization” (Giordano & Roller, 2002, p. 99), the potential role of the regions
and its media to actively contribute to European integration and to the construction of a working EPS is at stake.
Methodology
Research design and sample
The research design is both comparative and longitudinal. The study examines the coverage of four newspapers, two Spanish newspapers -El País and El Mundo- and two Catalan newspapers -La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya-, across three periods of time –the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections-.
Firstly, newspapers were selected as the source of analysis because they tend to have more political news than television news since they have fewer restrictions in terms of space and production costs (De Vreese et al., 2006).
The media chosen for the research are the two most read daily newspapers in Spain -El País and El Mundo (AIMC, 2014)- and the two most read daily outlets in Catalonia -La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya (Fundacc, 2014)- (See Appendix A for a summary of the characteristics of each newspaper). Because of their high readership in Spain and Catalonia, it can be claimed that the selected newspapers are respectively influential in the country and the region. Two media have been chosen in each case instead of one in order to provide a more representative sample of the press. The four newspapers are comparable because they share common features, such as their status as quality newspapers and their distribution across the country. Nevertheless, La Vanguardia and El Periódico are mostly only read in Catalonia, thus the amount of readers of the selected Spanish outlets is almost the double number of readers of the chosen Catalan newspapers. Moreover, the ideological editorial stance of the selected outlets is balanced with one Catalan and Spanish newspaper being centre-left (El País and El Periódico) and one Catalan and one Spanish newspaper being
centre-right (El Mundo and La Vanguardia). In this sense, it is also relevant to mention that El Periódico (Grupo Zeta) and El País (Grupo Prisa) have been said to normally favour social democratic parties (Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC)). El Mundo (Unidad Editorial) tends to be supportive of the conservative party (Partido Popular (PP)) and critical with the social democratic forces while La
Vanguardia (Grupo Godó) is usually positive about the Catalan liberal party (Convergència i Unió (CiU)). As background information that will later be valuable for the analysis of the results, it is relevant to mention that while left-wing forces ruled both Catalonia and Spain during the 2004 and 2009 EP elections, there was a shift in the power for the 2014 European elections towards a conservative government in Spain and a liberal administration in
Catalonia.
For technical purporses, I analysed the print version of each newspaper rather than the online version. Firstly, most of the information available about the readership of the outlets is relevant only to their paper version. Secondly, not all the newspapers are accessible through media databases, such as Lexis Nexis, and the searching engines in their websites are not sufficiently accurate in most ooutlets. In the cases of La Vanguardia and El Periódico, where the same editions of the newspaper are available both in Spanish and in Catalan language, El Periódico was analysed in its Catalan version and La Vanguardia in its Spanish edition according to availability1. This data was collected at the Hemeroteca General or Newspaper and Periodicals Library of the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Having justified the selection of the media, a time frame will be provided. Firstly, the European elections have been selected for being a relevant EU event with sufficient amount
1 La Vanguardia has a Catalan and Spanish edition of the newspaper only since 2011 whilst El Periódico publishes the two versions since 1997.
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of coverage available. Previous research (Boomgarden et al., 2010) posed that the coverage of European affairs has been portrayed as cyclical in nature, normally having coverage of the EU absent from the news agenda and peaking around important EU events. Considering that previous studies have shown that the election coverage significantly increases around the period shortly before the day of the election (Leroy & Siune, 1994; Peter, Lauf & Semetko, 2004), the study drew on a content analysis of the news coverage in the immediate week prior to the June 2004, June 2009 and May 2014 European elections, including the day of the election. Hence, the concrete analysis dates are from 7th to the 13th of June 2004, from the 1st to the 7th June 2009 and from the 19th to the 25th May 2014.
Keeping this in mind, I first selected all the articles relevant to the EP elections topic from all the sections of the outlet ranging from National, International, Culture to Economy within the specified time frames from each year and each newspaper. Later, from the first sample, I chose only news stories. Considering that normally outlets include opinion articles by external contributors, journalistic genres other than news, such as Editorial or Opinion, were left out from the selection in order to guarantee that only articles written by the newspaper’s journalists were analyzed. Lastly, in order to narrow down the size of the final sample, I carried out a random sampling within the articles of each year of each newspaper. The final sample consists of N = 480 articles, consisting of 40 articles per newspaper per election year (See Appendix B for a more detailed explanation of the sampling procedure).
Coding procedure and measures
In order to code the articles, a deductive codebook was built drawing inspiration from the guidelines provided by Schuck, Xesonakis, Banducci & de Vreese (2009) (See Appendix B to see the full codebook). Nevertheless, I later slightly inductively amended the codebook after an initial round of coding. Each article was coded by one researcher. Additionally, one external Spanish native speaker, trained accordingly, coded 10% of the stories and inter-coder
reliability tests were conducted. The results of the Krippendorff’s Alpha for each measure used in the analysis were satisfactory turning the research into reliable (See Appendix A to check the statistical tests results).
Research on media coverage concerning the European Union has focused on
dimensions such as visibility of EU news, the European versus domestic nature of the news, the tone of the stories and news framing (Boomgaarden et al., 2010). Based on the success of Boomgaarden et al. (2010)’s research, a focus was placed on two of their measures: visibility of the EP elections and the European or domestic nature of the news. These two measures have been selected for the analysis because de Vreese (2002) has remarked that the visibility of the elections in the news as well as the presence of EU political figures in the coverage of the European parliamentary elections is a necessary requirement for the functioning of democratic politics. Hence, both measures appear as relevant for the discussion of the emergence of a European public sphere2.
Firstly, in order to operationalise the visibility of the EP elections in the news, I took into account the amount of pages dedicated to the elections, the length of the articles as well as whether the article was included in the front page or the first section of the newspaper. Furthermore, I also coded if a story about the EP elections appeared in the front page of the outlet. Acknowledging that the first impression an audience has from a newspaper is its front page and therefore given its influence in terms of visibility, every time an article about the European elections was published in the front page, it was accounted as two pages when added to the total sum of pages dedicated to the elections.
Secondly, in order to tap the European versus domestic nature of the articles, I
considered the actors and the topics. On the one hand, I coded for the main actor of the article as well as other actors mentioned in the story in order of appearance. As defined by de Vreese 2
See Appendix C: Code Book for further details on the operationalization of the measures.
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et al. (2006), an actor is a person (e.g MEP candidate), group of persons (e.g. political party), institution (e.g. national parliament) or other organisations (e.g. Amnesty International) featured in story. This means that an actor is not only an individual, but it can also be a collective. The actors were classified according to their type (e.g. Prime Minister, leader of a party, etc.) and their nature (whether they are domestic actors, actors from another Member State (MS), Member of the European Parliament (MEP), European actors or other types of actors). Domestic actors refer to national parties, former or current members of the
government or the national parliament, governmental spokesperson or any other actor exclusively dealing with domestic affairs. Actors from another MS include former or current presidents, Prime Ministers or members of the national Parliament of another European country. EU actors comprise former MEPs, former or current members of the Council of the EU, the European Council and the European Commission (EC), European alliances as well as any other strictly European actors. MEPs constitute the candidates running for the analysed EP elections. MEPs have been treated as separate code from “Domestic” or “EU” since it is quite likely that the coverage of the elections will be focused on the candidates and it would be ‘unfair’ to classify them in one of the other categories. The category “Other” contains any actor that does not fit in the aforementioned categories.
On the other hand, in order to code for the topics, I first identified the main topic of each story and then I classified it depending on their focus (domestic, affecting or going on in another MS, EU-wide topic or other). The topic refers to the subject or issue addressed in the article; it can range from the coverage of an event, like an MEP campaign rally, to an
introduction to the common tasks carried out by European institutions. Domestic topics include subjects exclusively or mostly affecting Catalonia and/or Spain, even if the article is presented by the journalist and/or under the label “EP elections” as related to the European elections (e.g. abortion law in Spain). Subjects from another Member State refer to issues
affecting other European countries, regardless of whether a relationship between the two MS is established or not (e.g. MEP campaign in the United Kingdom tackling affairs affecting in the UK). European issues constitute any topic affecting all Member States or measures initiated by or related to any EU actor (e.g. how much does an MEP earn?). The category “Other” contains any topic that does not fit in the abovementioned categories.
Results
The results will be presented through two main sections: firstly, I will point out general observations about both Spanish and Catalan newspapers and across time; secondly, I will compare the outcomes between Spanish and Catalan media. Through the two sections, I will first present the results related to visibility and later the outcomes regarding
Europeanization.
Increased visibility, yet still limited Europeanization
In line with the expectations of H1, the visibility of the European elections increased from 2004 in the 2014 in the four analysed newspapers. El Mundo doubled its amount of coverage in this ten year period, dedicating 7.2% of its newspaper to the European elections in 2004 up from 14.4% in 2014. Similar patterns are followed by El País and El Periódico, which respectively jumped from 8.3% and 5.9% in 2004 to 14% and 13.1% in 2014 in terms of number articles about the EP elections. La Vanguardia is the only case that somewhat deviates from the other ones, since its amount of coverage in 2004 was already notably high (13.4%) compared to the rest of newspaper, which later slightly decreased in 2009 (9%) and finally increased again in 2014 (15.8%). Hence, while the visibility of the European elections has augmented in the four outlets, as Figure 1 displays, La Vanguardia is the only case that
does not follow a gradual pattern and at the same time it is the newspaper that accounted for the highest visibility of the EP elections on average (12.7%).
Figure 1. Visibility of the four analyzed newspapers in 2004, 2009 and 2014
In terms of Europeanization, it can be observed that domestic actors (ES: 67.0%, CAT: 52.5%) still appear as the main actors in most stories above European actors (ES: 29.1%, CAT: 42.9%) both in Catalan and Spanish newspapers in all the election coverage since 2004. A similar pattern is followed in regard to the focus in the topics of these articles with high domestic focus (ES: 71.6%, CAT: 56.6%) and lesser amount to the stories referring to issues affecting other European countries and tackling purely European issues (ES: 28.3%, CAT: 42.9%). In this sense, in line with H2, it can be said that the coverage of the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections is more domestic than European and therefore the degree of
Europeanization is still limited.
Furthermore, the presence of European actors and EU topics in Catalan and Spanish newspapers is low both in terms of horizontal (another Member State) and vertical (EU-wide)
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 2004 2009 2014
Visibility: Newspapers across time
El Mundo El País El Periódico La Vanguardia
Europeanization, with other Member States’ actors (ES: 18.7%, CAT: 26.2%) and topics (ES: 17.5%, CAT: 25.0%) about other Member States accounting for only slightly higher
representation than EU-wide actors (ES: 10.4%, CAT: 16.6%) and issues (ES: 10.8%, 17.9%), but still notably lesser than national. Despite the results of horizontal and vertical Europeanization results do not significantly differ from each other, it can be seen that there is a trend towards horizontal Europeanization with actors, such as Geert Wilders, the leader of the far right-wing party in the Netherlands VVD, and topics, like campaign rallies in the United Kingdom, being somewhat more present than vertical Europeanization with actors, such as José Durão Barroso, former president of the European Commission, or issues, like the increase of powers of the European Parliament after the Lisbon Treaty.
Catalonia versus Spain: differences in Europeanization
Increased visibility across time and a limited degree of Europeanization appear as the common patterns for both Catalan and Spanish media. Nevertheless, it is interesting to compare the variations in visibility and Europeanization between the analysed Catalan and Spanish newspapers.
Firstly, if the visibility of the EP elections is compared between Catalan and Spanish newspapers, there are no differences with the total percentage sum on average being exactly the same (11.2%). What is more, there are almost no dissimilarities in the amount of times EP election articles were published on front pages with 26 appearances in Catalan newspapers and 25 accounts in Spanish outlets. The average length of the articles does not greatly differ either with more than half of the stories taking up either one quarter or half a page in both Catalan (55.3%) and Spanish media (51.1%). Acknowledging the relevant rise in the turnout in Catalonia in the 2014 EP elections, a higher visibility was expected in Catalan newspapers compared to the Spanish in the coverage of these specific elections (H2). However, the percentages of coverage of the 2014 elections were in fact very similar, with 14.2% of the
Spanish newspapers and 14.4% of the Catalan outlets being about the elections, rejecting H3. It is relevant however to point out that the difference in the percentage increase between 2009 and 2014 was more noticeable in Catalan (4.8%) than in Spanish media (2.4%).
A deeper look at the visibility results for each newspaper allows us to see that there is almost no difference in the amount of pages dedicated to the elections when we compare the two Spanish outlets (El Mundo 11.3%, El País 11.1%) and a minor change between the two Catalan newspapers with La Vanguardia accounting for a higher visibility (12.7%) than El Periódico (9.7%). Interestingly enough, it should be mentioned that whilst El Periódico is the newspaper displaying the lowest percentage of visible coverage of the elections, it is also the only outlet that has incorporated on several occasions the European election as topic of the day in its first section (43 times) as well as the only outlet that since 2009 publishes news related to the European elections with no section distinction. For instance, El País and El Mundo still split the EP election articles between the sections of “National/Politics” and “International”, depending on whether they regard the news as affecting Catalonia/Spain or other Member States exclusively or the EU as a whole instead. On the other hand, El Periódico since 2009 and La Vanguardia since 2014 make no division between EP election news about Catalonia/Spain and other countries.
Secondly, the results show significant differences in the coverage between Catalan and Spanish outlets with La Vanguardia and El Periódico together showing a higher degree of Europeanization than El País and El Mundo combined, both in terms of the nature of the main actor (χ2(2, Ν = 480) = 10.76,
p = .005) and focus of the article (χ2(2, Ν = 480) = 12.37, p = .002), supporting H4. Catalan outlets exhibited a significant higher amount of European actors and less national actors than Spanish newspapers as well as more articles with a European focus, as Table 1 shows.
Table 1
Comparison between domestic and European actors and topics in CAT and ES newspapers
Nature/Focus Actors Topics
ES CAT ES CAT
Domestic 67.0% (161)a 52.5% (126)b 71.6% (172)a 56.6% (136)b
European (Horizontal + Vertical)
29.1% (70)a 42.9% (103)b 28.3% (68)a 42.9% (103)b
Other 3.7% (9)a 4.5% (11)a 0.0% (0)a 0.4% (1)a
Total 100% (240) 100% (240) 100% (240) 100% (240)
Note 1: The data is provided both in percentage and in amount of actors/topics (in brackets). Note 2: Differing subscript letters are associated with significant differences at .05 level.
If each newspaper is taken independently from the analysis, aside from being
categorised as either Catalan or Spanish, it can be observed that La Vanguardia and El Mundo are the two outlets that clearly significantly differ from each other whilst El País and El Periódico have points in common between each other as well as with the other two, as Table 2 displays.
Table 2
Comparison between domestic and European actors and topics in the 4 analysed newspapers
Nature/Focus Actors Topics
EM ElPe ElPa LV EM ElPe ElPa LV
Domestic 71.6% (86)a 53.3% (64)b 62.5% (75)a, b 51.6% (62)b 73.3% (88)a 57.7% (69)a,b 70.0% (84)a,b 55.8% (67)b European 25.8% (31)a 39.1% (47)a,b 32.5% (39)a,b 46.6% (56)b 26.6% (32)a 41.6% (50)a,b 30.0% (36)a,b 44.1% (53)b Other 2.5% (3)a 7.5% (9)a 2.7% (6)a 1.6% (2)a 0.0% (0)a 0.8% (1)a 0.0% (0)a 0.0% (0)a Total 100% (120) 100% (120) 100% (120) 100% (120) 100% (120) 100% (120) 100% (120) 100% (120) Note 1: The data is provided both in percentage and in amount of actors/topics (in brackets). Note 2: Differing subscript letters are associated with significant differences at .05 level.
Finally, if the variable time is included in the analysis, it should be noted that the variances in terms of Europeanization between the Catalan and the Spanish press only start being significant in the 2009 European elections (actors: χ2(2, n = 160) = 6.93, p = .031; topics: χ2(1, n = 160) = 6.95, p = .008).
Therefore, as H5 predicted the level of Europeanization of the coverage of the European elections in Catalan outlets has gradually increased from 2004 to 2014.
Nevertheless, it was expected that, coinciding with the rise in support for the secession of Catalonia and the Europeanization of the discourse of Catalan political parties and civil society organisations, the 2014 EP elections would have been a turning point, but the results illustrate that the significant differences in the coverage are already notably visible in the previous elections.
In conclusion, in line with my hypotheses, there are substantial differences in the level of Europeanization between Catalan and Spanish newspapers with the first being more
Europeanized than the second, yet interestingly enough the visibility of the European
elections does not differ between Catalan and Spanish outlets. Moreover, when examining the variations across time, it can be seen how the dissimilarities between Catalan and Spanish newspapers only started being significant in the 2009 EP elections. In spite of these differences, Spanish and Catalan media both follow the same pattern of European election coverage as most Member States, characterised by an increased visibility across time and still a limited degree of Europeanization with a predominant presence of domestic actors and topics instead of European, hindering the construction of a European public sphere.
Discussion and conclusions
The core outcome of the present research gives a clear answer to the paper’s research question: the coverage of the EP elections in Catalan newspapers differs from Spanish outlets in terms of Europeanization, but not in regard to visibility.
In this sense, the results of this research serve its two main objectives. On the one hand, it provides a nuanced approach to cross-national studies on the coverage of the EU,
suggesting that the cultural, societal and political heterogeneity of countries should be considered given that there might be variations within EU Member States due to strong regional identity or differences in the intra-national media landscape. Consequently, the results imply that perhaps in the future some regions within Member States could take up an active role in promoting the construction of a European Public Sphere, in view of the notable tendency towards Europeanization of their media.
On the other hand, they are also in line with the outcome of previous studies (De Vreese et al., 2006), which advocate that generally the visibility of the European Parliament elections has increased across time, yet the Europeanization of its stories is still limited Therefore, in the end, both Catalan and Spanish newspapers still follow the common pattern of coverage of the European elections, which in practice hinders the effective development of a common EPS, where citizens, media and politicians can come together and openly discuss European topics.
Firstly, focusing on the visibility aspect, the salience of the European elections has increased from 2004 to 2014 in both Catalan and Spanish elections, in line with present trends in most EU countries, as identified by previous research (de Vreese et al, 2006; Boomgaarden et al., 2013). In addition, it could be argued that the outburst of the economic crisis in Spain in 2008 and the subsequent high participation of European actors (e.g. Troika3) in the country have contributed to the increase in prominence of the latest EP elections in the media. In this sense, the results are in line with Corbett (2014), who points out that given factors such as the economic crisis or the recent rise of powers of the European Parliament, the 2014 European elections could have set a precedent for the future.
3 The term Troika refers to the presence of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal and Spain since 2010 and the consequent financial measures for these countries that these institutions have taken.
25
It was expected that coinciding with the significant rise in public support for the independence of Catalonia from Spain in recent years, which has looked at the EU as an alternative institutional channel to achieve their secessionist objectives (Giordano & Roller, 2002), the 2014 EP elections would have been more visible in the Catalan newspapers than in the Spanish outlets that year. This hypothesis was not supported since the visibility of the 2014 European elections was very similar between Catalan and Spanish newspapers, possibly because the economic crisis has equally affected the region and the country.
However, it is true that if we take a look at the increase in coverage between 2009 and 2014, the percentage of news dedicated to the EP elections in Catalan outlets grew (4.8%) twice as much as the coverage in Spanish newspapers (2.4%). Corresponding to this rise, the turnout in the 2014 European elections increased by almost 11% in Catalonia whilst it decreased by 1% in Spain when compared with the participation results from 2009 (324.cat, 2014; Parlamento Europeo, 2014). Hence, this analogous increase of the coverage of the elections in Catalan outlets and the turnout in the elections in Catalonia could be explained by the observed correlation between visibility and turnout posed by Banducci & Semetko (2003, as cited in De Vreese et al., 2006), where greater visibility of European campaigns relates to higher turnout in the EP elections. If the results are analyzed while taking into account the variations across newspapers, the intensification of the coverage of the 2014 European elections is likely to be clarified particularly by the editorial stance of La Vanguardia, which has historically been linked to the party Convergència i Unió (CiU), currently ruling the region. La Vanguardia is the newspaper that clearly experienced a higher increase in the amount of articles dedicated to the EP elections in 2014 as during this time the ruling party in Catalonia has notably intensified its external activity and visibility in relation to the increase in support for independence, such as mobilizing its diplomatic forces abroad or creating a Catalan diplomatic service (Bourne, 2014).
Secondly, shifting the focus to the results on Europeanization, differences were identified as expected between Catalan and Spanish newspapers. The significantly higher amount of European actors and topics in Catalan outlets compared to Spanish papers could be explained by the region’s elite position towards the EU, determined by Boomgaarden et al. (2013) as a factor that can give an explanation for the “Europeanness” of the news. Keeping in mind the pro-European approach of the party Convergència i Unió (Giordano & Roller, 2002), which has ruled Catalonia for 28 years, it could be argued that CiU’s political strategy has had a relevant impact on the shaping of the current Catalan society and therefore of its media. This influence might have become more evident in the past years. Recently, coinciding with the increase in support for an independent Catalonia, the discourse of Catalan political parties and civil society has been said to be Europeanized. Both the Catalan government, ruled by CiU, and pro-independence civil society organisations –notably the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC)- have intensified their externalization strategies, mostly focused on European actors (Bourne, 2014). At the same time, the government has taken symbolic decisions, like sending letters to all EU heads of state and government and the European Commission trying to draw their attention to the Catalan independence process. The ANC has, for instance, organised pro-independence demonstrations under visibly European themes (e.g. 1.5 million demonstration claiming “Catalonia, a new European state” in 2012).
Therefore, it could be claimed that the higher degree of Europeanization in Catalan newspapers compared to the Spanish ones presented above is a reflection of the current Europeanization of the Catalan political elite, explaining as well the gradual increase of Europeanization over time in Catalan outlets. This observation implies that the ties between the media and political forces are certainly relevant as the Europeanization of Catalan newspapers can likely be explained by the position of the region’s elite towards the EU.
Another alternative explanation to the differences in Europeanization between Catalan and Spanish papers could be one of the arguments provided by Schuck & de Vreese (2011), who claim that visibility and degree of “Europeanness” is higher in countries with higher EU public support. In this sense, Hooghe & Marks (2004) state that societies with multiple identities, like the Catalan, tend to be more supportive towards the European Union. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Catalan public opinion is more positive towards the EU than Spanish, especially considering that the impact of the economic crisis is likely to have increased the negative opinion towards the EU both in the region and the country, thus further research in the field would be required to explore this possible alternative explanation.
Granting the favour historically shown by Catalan governments towards the EU as well as the current Europeanization of Catalan political communicative space, it can be suggested that perhaps sub-state political units in the EU can indeed have a strong potential role in enhancing European integration and in constructing a European public sphere. In these processes, the media would play a crucial role; having the potential to both effectively inform and engage citizens and politicians in an arena of democratic discussion on common
European issues and consequently reducing the acclaimed democratic deficit of the EU.
However, this tendency is frustrated by the still limited degree of Europeanization with domestic actors and topics still dominating the coverage of the EP elections above of European actors and issues. The main reason for this low level of Europeanization in coverage is greatly related to the domestic focus of the national campaign for the European elections. For instance, most forces make use of their party leaders, or their most media-friendly figures, for campaign rallies and these often even become the main actors of the campaign instead of the MEPs who are in fact running for the elections. In line with this, throughout the coding procedure several opinion articles and even editorials - not included in the sample - from the analysed newspapers were discovered that openly criticised the nature
of the EP elections’ campaigns for being too domestic focused and having little to do with European affairs, which is one of the characteristics of second-order elections (de Vreese et al., 2006). This aspect of the campaigns and consequently of the media coverage represents a stumbling block for the construction of an effective European public sphere, since both visibility and Europeanization of the EP elections are required conditions for democratic politics.
In conclusion, in spite of an observed increasing visibility of the European elections in Catalan newspapers and a tendency to become more Europeanized in the coverage of these elections, the reality is that EU news remain mostly domestically focused. Yet it is true that the 2014 EP elections could have set a turning point for the future. Given the augmented turnout in Catalonia and the increase in the visibility and Europeanization of the coverage in Catalan newspapers in the latest elections, the second-order theory might be, after each
election, less applicable to the European elections, as challenged by Corbett (2014). However, the potential of Catalan media to play an active role in building up a European Public Sphere could appear as contradictory to the political and societal claims for independence of the region, considering that pro-secession actors have “failed to obtain support from sufficiently authoritive European actors” (Bourne, 2014, p. 3).
This study is not without shortcomings bearing in mind that only news stories were included in the sample and other types of pieces, such as opinion articles or editorials, would have probably modified both visibility and Europeanization. Furthermore, the selection of the outlets based upon newspaper popularity in terms of readership respectively in the region and in the country, however perhaps it would be worthwhile selecting papers that further differ from each other in order to identify other variables in the analysis. Future research should try to expand the sample group to include television and radio to see if the same pattern is also followed by other media, as well as carry out a similar analysis in other countries
encompassing regions with strong distinct identity, such as the case of the United Kingdom and Scotland. Moreover, further research should look into studying Catalan public opinion towards the EU compared to Spanish, already available through the EC Eurobarometer. This way, it would be possible to investigate in depth media effects on the Catalan and Spanish populations, which would allow for comparison of the Europeanization of the three core actors in democracy –citizens, politicians and media- and identify opportunities for the construction of a functioning common European public sphere.
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Appendix A
A1. Table 1: Basic information about the four selected newspapers Table 1
Basic information about the four selected newspapers
Newspaper Place of edition Readers/day Political
orientation
El País Madrid 1,612,000 Centre-left
El Mundo Madrid 1,006,000 Centre-right
La Vanguardia Barcelona 677,000 (654,000 in Catalonia, 23,000 rest of Spain)
Centre-right El Periódico Barcelona 540,000 (456,000 in Catalonia,
84,000 rest of Spain)
Centre-left Source: (AIMC, 2014; Fundacc, 2014)
A2. Table 2: Inter-coder reliability statistics Table 2
Inter-coder reliability statistics
Measure Krippendorff’s Alpha (KALPHA)
What section? KALPHA = 1
First section? KALPHA = 1
European elections label? KALPHA = 1
Type of story KALPHA = 1
Visuals KALPHA = 0.89
Front Page? KALPHA = 1
Length KALPHA = 0.94
Main Actor: Type KALPHA = 0.86
Main Actor: Nature KALPHA = 0.81
Main Topic: Type KALPHA = 0.82
Topics: Focus KALPHA = 0.82
Note: KALPHA = 0.80 is often considered as the norm for a good reliability test, with a minimum of 0.67 or even 0.60. Therefore, 1 is regarded as the ideal reliability result.
Appendix B B1. Codebook
Codebook
This codebook has drawn inspiration from the guidelines provided by the European Parliament Election Study (2009) to do codebooks to carry out content analysis on European Union (EU) topics.
1. Selection criteria of articles
I first selected all the articles relevant to the European Parliament (EP)
elections topic from all the sections of the outlet ranging from National, International, Culture to Economy within the specified time frames from each year and each
newspaper.
Later, from the first sample, I chose only news stories. Considering that normally outlets include opinion articles by external contributors, journalistic genres other than news, such as Editorial or Opinion, were left out from the selection in order to guarantee that only articles written by the newspaper’s journalists were analysed. Besides, the stories published in magazines or additional booklets that come together with the newspaper (e.g. offering extra local or regional news) will be not be coded for.
Lastly, in order to narrow down the size of the final sample, I carried out a random sampling within the articles of each year of each newspaper. The final sample consists of N = 480 articles, consisting of 40 articles per newspaper per election year.
The relevance to the topic EP elections was assessed based on the headline and the first paragraph of each article, which should mention the term “(European
Parliamentary) elections” or any fact, actor or event related to the EP elections, such 37
as names of MEPs running for the elections or campaign rallies. Special attention was paid to the articles under the label “European elections” frequently created in
newspapers to publish stories about the European elections. However, being part of this section is not a mandatory condition in order for the article to be selected for the analysis.
Most pages in the newspapers included a main article and one or two shorter stories either on the bottom or the side of the page. Each of these minor articles was coded for separately as long as they had a corresponding headline accompanying them.
2. General guidelines
The units of analysis are the articles from each of the four analysed
newspapers. The articles are available in scanned digital version of the print version. A coding sheet will be provided in order for the coder to introduce the analysed data whilst coding.
Before starting coding, each article of each newspaper of each year should be given a numeric number by the main coder in order to keep track of the total amount of coded articles (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc).
3. External characteristics
Each article will be coded for the following items depending on several
external, superficial or design-related features, such as page number, section or type of article.
3.1. Newspaper
Write down the newspaper you are coding with one of the following codes:
- El Mundo = 1
- El Periódico de Catalunya = 2 - El País = 3
- La Vanguardia = 4
3.2. Date
Date is coded in three variables in different corresponding cells in the following order: day, month and year (e.g. 07, 06, 2004).
3.3.a. Section
The coder should write down what section contains the coded article. It can typically be one of the following sections:
- National/Politics = 1
This section normally regards to national politics in Spain. What is considered as “national” or “international” differs from newspaper to newspaper, but in any case it is specifically specified.
- International/World = 2
This category refers to news, normally political, affecting any other country outside Spain, ranging from the European Union (EU) to any other continent. The same as with “National/Politics” the border line between “national” or “international” differs from newspaper to newspaper (e.g. some newspapers make the distinction between EP
elections’ news affecting Spain (“National”) and other Member States
(“International”) whilst some outlets just give to EP elections news the specific “European elections” label).
- Opinion/Editorial = 3
Opinion articles and editorials are normally labelled as such and sometimes they are included in a section exclusively dedicated to it.
- Culture = 4
Articles published in this section regard to any culture-related topic, such as literature, education, cinema or languages.
- Economy = 5
This section is dedicated to economic and financial news.
- Other = 6
Any other section not regarded in any of the previous categories.
- Not applicable = 7
If the article does not belong to any specific section in the newspapers (e.g. if the story is in the front page).
3.3.b. First section
The first pages of the newspaper just after the front page typically display some of the highlights or more relevant news according to the newspaper (e.g. the first
pages can sometimes be labelled as “Topic of the day”). Therefore, it is important to know if EP elections’ stories are included in this very first section of the outlet. The coder should answer to: Is the story published in one of the first pages of the newspapers and specifically underlined as a relevant topic?
No = 0 Yes = 1
3.3.c. European Parliament elections label
The large majority of articles are under a European Parliament elections label, specifically created for these elections. Hence, the coder should answer to: Is the article published under an EP elections section?
No = 0 Yes = 1
3.4. Type of story
The type of story or journalistic genre should be coded with one of the following codes:
- News story = 1
It is the most frequent type of story. It ranges from factual news report to the coverage of an event, such as MEPs’ campaign rallies.
- Bullet = 2
This sort of piece is normally found on the front page or first page of an outlet. It generally encompasses a headline and one or a few short sentences summarising the content of the article, which will be later found in the newspaper. Nevertheless, short
news stories will also be included under this category (e.g. ‘breves’ news piece in Spanish language).
- Headline = 3
Only the headline of an article, frequently found on the front page of a news outlet.
- Other = 4
Any other type of articles not regarded in any of the previous categories.
3.5. How many photographs, visuals, graphs or illustrations does the article display? They usually accompany the main feature of a page. Any photograph, visual, graph or illustration that does not go together with an article will not be coded (e.g. comic strip or satirical drawing).
___ (total number)
4. Content characteristics 4.1. Visibility
In order to operationalise the visibility of the European elections in the news, it will be taken into consideration the amount of pages dedicated to the elections and whether articles about the EP elections appear on the front page or not, including articles that were not selected as part of the sample for the content analysis. Note: This means that not only news article have been considered to code for visibility, but also other journalistic genres, like editorials or interviews.
