1
The refugee crisis: a domestic or a European concern? An inquiry into the emergence of a ‘European public sphere-light’.
Arnout Maat - #10003310
Master thesis Political Communication University of Amsterdam
Date: 3 – 2 – 2017
Supervisor: mw. dr. M.E. Wojcieszak
2 Abstract
This thesis investigates to what extent political debates regarding contentious political issues are framed in the media as ‘domestic’ or ‘pan-European’ concern. By deploying a manual content analysis on the newspaper coverage of the refugee crisis in the Netherlands and the UK, it delivers an original contribution to the already existing body of literature on the ‘European public sphere’ and the ‘Europeanness’ of news coverage. More specifically, this research tests not only whether newspaper media employ more European of domestic frames, but also if there is any significant variance between quality papers and tabloids, countries with a long and a shorter history in the EU, and between countries with and without an outspoken media culture. Ultimately, the results will have implications for the future of the public debate within and about the European Union.
Keywords: European public sphere, European public sphere—light, ‘Europeanness’ of the news, framing, news coverage, newspapers, tabloids, quality press, refugee crisis, European Union,
3 Introduction
Nowadays, the issue of creating a European public sphere is more relevant than ever. Over the past twenty five years, political power has moved from national territories to the European Union (EU), while citizens’ loyalties did not undergo the same up-scaling transition. Put simply, in a political sense we became more European, but we do not feel more European. The resulting distrust towards the EU among citizens is demonstrated by the recent EU-referendums in Britain and the Netherlands, which both turned out badly for the EU. ‘Anti-EU-parties’, such as Geert Wilders’ PVV, Marine le Pen’s Front National and Frauke Petry’s AfD are on the rise, and pleads for a referendum to get out of the EU, for example in the Netherlands, France and Italy, are turning louder and louder.
This distrust towards the EU is often attributed to the fact that there is no ‘public sphere’ that spans the same territory as EU institutions have under their control. One of the reasons for this is that mass media - as crucial information providers, the core sources of information for the majority of European citizens, and also the mirror that should reflect what the public is thinking - are still focusing on national audiences, and not on European audiences (Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009; Gleissner & De Vreese, 2005). Therefore, the public debate is still organized on the national level, instead of on the international level (Kandyla & De Vreese, 2011).
But to simply state that there is no European public sphere at this time, is, for the sake of precision and for a future-oriented outlook, neither sufficient nor satisfying. The main goals of this paper are, therefore, to investigate more precisely how ‘European’ the media coverage in our public sphere is, and to find whether certain media factors, which in this thesis are the ‘quality’ of a media outlet, the history of a country in the EU and the outspokenness in media culture, contribute to the establishing of such a European sphere.
4
A lot of research is already been done on the main goals I stated above, namely on investigating the current state of the ‘Europeanness’ of media coverage in the public debate (e.g. Gleissner & De Vreese, 2005; De Vreese, 2007; Kandyla & De Vreese 2011; Koopmans, 2004; Trenz, 2004), and on investigating which media factors will enhance this Europeanness (e.g. Schuck & de Vreese, 2011; Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009; Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2012 & Boomgaarden et al., 2013). What is missing in this literature, though, is an angle that really captures the idea of how the public debate is framed as a European concern (compared to a domestic concern).
In order to be able to contribute to the literature in a meaningful way, this thesis addresses the following overarching research question, namely:
To what extent are political debates regarding contentious political issues framed in the media as ‘domestic’ or ‘European’ concern?
Theoretically, in order to answer this question, I draw on two literatures: on ‘Europeanization’ and on framing, which together offer insight in the degree in which newspapers employ domestic or European angles to present the issues. More specifically, I differentiate between a domestic angle through which political issues are presented in the media coverage, namely by framing these issues as being a national concern, as well as the European angle, which indicates that issues are framed as being a European concern. So, the more European frames are used instead of domestic frames, the more this leads contributes to a ‘Europeanization’ of the public sphere in which the political debate is focused on European concerns instead of domestic concerns. This, in the end, will situate the European citizen in a European debate that suits the institutional framework of the EU, and thus, I expect, will contribute to develop public loyalties to the EU.
5
Methodologically, I conducted a manual content analysis on newspapers, researching the extent to which the relevant case of the refugee crisis (because the refugee crisis can both be potentially framed as a domestic or European concern) is framed as domestic or European concern. The added value of this approach is the fact that I do not look at the visibility of ‘European’ issues and institutions in texts, as the existing literature does, but instead look at the framing of the debate because, as I will argue later on, this better captures the concept of what is meant by a ‘European public sphere’.
In addition to expanding existing theorizing and research on the European public sphere and framing by the media, this thesis makes three crucial advances by examining both country-specific and media-specific factors that can influence the framing of a controversial socio-political issues in the media. When it comes to country-specific factors, I examine whether the extent to which a controversial socio-political issue is framed by the newspaper media as being a European concern instead of a domestic one depend on the country’s shorter or longer history in the EU. The second theoretical contribution in this study lies in the fact that I differentiate between quality media and popular media, examining whether quality media will use more European frames as compared to domestic frames than tabloids. Lastly, I look at the intersection of country and media-specific factors and also test whether framing depends on the culture of media outspokenness in a country.
Addressing these questions is theoretically and practically important, because then we not only know more about in which degree we can already speak of a ‘European public sphere’ but also have a more clear idea about under what conditions the European frames are most likely to emerge. So, ultimately, the answers to these questions have deep implications for the potential of an emerging European public sphere, and thus for future stability of the EU and the European institutions.
6
In the following sections, I first review the concept of the European public sphere. Later, I turn to the literature on the Europeanization of the news to show that the best way to assess the state of the European sphere is to find in which degree issues are covered by the media as being a European concern. After that, I will discuss the literature on Europeanization of the news, namely to argue why the best way to investigate such pan-European coverage is not to merely count how many times certain ‘EU-issues and actors or institutions’ are mentioned by the media, but instead to take on a framing approach for testing the hypotheses that are related to the RQ stated above. I will thus focus not so much on the appearance of words alone, but I will also necessarily embrace the context in which these issues and actors / institutions are mentioned. This approach, in the end, will be used to test some relevant hypotheses, that are about the current state of ‘Europeanness’ of the news and country-specific and media factors that could possibly enhance such a ‘Europeanness’.
Conceptualization
Towards a ‘European public sphere-light’
I will outline in this section what I mean with a ‘European public sphere-light’, why it is useful to measure it and why the framing of issues as being ‘European’ is crucial for its existence: news must be rather European than domestic. This is an important notion, that I will expand later on. But first, it is necessary to first describe what the concept of ‘public sphere’ entails.
As Habermas (1974, 49) famously coins, a public sphere is ‘’a realm of our social life
in which something approaching public opinion can be formed’’, or, as De Vreese (2007, 9)
calls it, ‘’an arena which enables citizens to interact and talk about (the same) political
issues’’. A public sphere thus exists by the grace of communication between citizens. The
7
‘‘the ruling structure organized in the form of a state’’ (Habermas, 1974, 49), which in our
case is the EU. As such, a European public sphere is not a place to talk about things like - for instance - the weather or sports, but instead a space in which hard, political news is discussed. In order to form a European public sphere, a ‘’common EU-wide communicative space’’ (Boomgaarden, 2013, 609), communication thus must be both between Europeans and about ‘European’ issues that at the same time are political: European political communication.
But what does ‘European political communication’ really stand for? Trenz (2004, 293) loosely defines European political communication as ‘’any form of communication which
refers to European governance in the wide sense, expressing consensus or dissent with regard to particular issues and debates in a European decision-making context.’’ Thus, for the
possibility of a European public sphere, it is crucial that the news is rather ‘European’ instead
of national. In achieving this, the media, as institutional transgressor of communication
between elites, the public and other actors, play an essential role (Trenz, 2004). But before such a European public sphere can emerge, there is still a long way to go. The mass media audiences, by which the readers of newspapers and users of television are meant, are mostly fragmented along national lines (Trenz, 2008). However, still, Trenz also acknowledges that it is possible that the existing national spheres consists of a mediatized discourse that may not consist of a Europe-wide audience, but, within its’ national boundaries, treats European topics – thus creating what Trenz calls a ‘’European public sphere-light’’ (Trenz, 2008, 275).
How do we achieve such a ‘European public sphere-light’, in which not audiences but the
debated issues are European? According to Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw (2009), news can be ‘made’ European through a process of ‘transnationalization’, which means that news is viewed by the media as concerning multiple countries, instead of just one (Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009). In a ‘horizontal’ way this entails that the topic of the news literally crosses the national border, while in a ‘vertical’ way this means that
8
attention is given to ‘Brussels’ instead of national politics (Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009). What these two dimensions have in common, most importantly though, is that issues in this context are brought rather as a European affair instead of a domestic one.
Europeanization as a framing issue
In order to describe how to measure to what extent the news is ‘European’ and not domestic, I now turn to combine the existing literature on the European public sphere with a framing approach. By doing this, the present research will methodologically differ from existing literature, in which, generally, a strict difference is made between (presumably easy to distinguish) ‘European’ actors (‘vertical’ Europeanization) or issues and policies (‘horizontal’ Europeanization) (Gleissner & De Vreese, 2005; Kandyla & De Vreese, 2011; Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009; Trenz, 2004; Schuck & de Vreese, 2011; Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2012). According to those articles, the news can be objectively ‘Europeanized’ (Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009) or ‘domesticated’ (Gleissner & De Vreese, 2005), depending on in which degree ‘European’ or ‘national’ actors and issues are presented in the media coverage. This makes the measuring of the Europeanness of the news a matter of capturing the visibility of certain ‘European’ issues and actors.
However, I argue that, in order to measure the degree of Europeanization of the news, we cannot look at mere ‘visibility’ of ‘European’ news, but instead we have to look in which way the issues are framed: as a domestic or as a European one. A strict distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘European’ issues is somewhat artificial, and does not take into account that the EU is both an intergovernmental and a supranational organization and thus deeply intertwined with national institutions. ‘Vertically’, a prime minister can both act as a national political leader and as a member of the Council of the EU. ‘Horizontally’, issues like the
9
refugee crisis or the Euro crisis can both be brought as a European and as a domestic issue, for they affect both scales.
It is not so much a clearly visible reality, but the creation of reality by the media that stands central in this paper. For example: when media are trying to display the refugee crisis as a Europe-wide affair, they will focus on streams of refugees across Europe instead of the influx of migrants in one particular country or city. The idea of refugees as being a phenomenon that literally transgresses borders is in that case selected and made salient by the media, a process that Entman (1993) calls framing. Therefore, the best way to measure the Europeanness of the news is not to focus on whether issues or actors are Europeanized or not, but to focus instead on whether the framing of the debate is so.1
Hypotheses
I will now turn to the formulation of hypotheses regarding the extent to which the media frame political issues as domestic versus ‘European’. They try to give a part of the answer on the RQ, that is about to what extent political debates regarding contentious political issues are framed in the media as ‘domestic’ or ‘pan-European’ concern. The hypotheses thus are about to what extent the political debate is already Europeanized, and which (country-specific) media factors enhance such Europeanization.
These hypotheses will not try to capture the visibility of ‘European’ issues and actors but the framing of media coverage about contentious socio-political issues, thus not so much focusing on the use of single words but instead on the broader context. Because I am the first to use this framing approach to this overarching issue, and I do not try to capture ‘given’ domestic or European issues (but instead debates that can be potentially framed as both a domestic or a European concern), I can’t rely too much on the existing literature. However, in order to make hypotheses about the Europeanization of frames in national public spheres, I
10
will still assess the conclusions that are drawn in previous research as giving an indication for
my hypotheses.
First of all, I investigate whether contentious political debates are framed more as a domestic issue than a European one in newspapers. A large body of research (e.g. De Vreese, 2007; Peter & De Vreese, 2004; Koopmans, 2004; Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2012; Schuck & De Vreese, 2011) suggests that the news is dominantly seen through a national outlook. Two studies in particular look at the covering of the European Constitution of 2005, and conclude that the issue was mainly reported from a European angle (Gleissner & De Vreese, 2005; Kandyla & De Vreese, 2011). But apart from these two articles, to my knowledge, no other studies state that (possible) ‘EU’-matters are more seen by the media as European issues than domestic ones. Next to this, national newspapers serve national audiences. Therefore, the first hypothesis will be:
- H1: Controversial socio-political issues, that can potentially be depicted as ‘domestic’ or
‘European’, are framed in newspapers as a national concern to a greater extent than a European one.
In addition to this baseline hypothesis, this research sheds a light on both country-specific and media characteristics that can possibly enhance the Europeanness of the news. The second aim of this thesis, therefore, is to make a comparison between countries that have a different ‘position’ in the EU. Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw (2009) suggest that the ‘integration’ of countries in the EU has impact on the Europeanization of the news. They find that longstanding EU-membership contributes to a significantly higher share of ‘vertical Europeanization’ (by which they mean the visibility of EU-institutions in the news). Kleinen-von Königslöw (2012) suggests that a longer history in the EU leads to more focus on EU-news.
11
These two findings have theoretical grounding in the theory of path dependence (Pierson, 2000), that states that routines of journalists and audiences take time to develop, and will slightly adapt to new topics of discussion (like, for example, the EU). Taken all together, this leads to my expectation regarding country-specific factors, namely that:
H2: Controversial socio-political issues, that can potentially be depicted as ‘domestic’ or
‘European’, are framed to a greater extent as a European concern by newspapers in countries that are more integrated in the EU, than by newspapers in countries that are less integrated in the EU.
The third goal of this study is to assess the media factors conditioning these relationships. That is, I examine distinct ‘types’ of media regarding their use of pan-European versus domestic frames. Does the type of news outlet matter in which degree issues are framed on one of these scales, and thus for whether media users are exposed to national or Europe-wide debates? Here, I focus on quality press versus tabloid press. But if this indeed will turn out to be the case, this means that the type of paper one reads brings him / her in a different ‘type’ of debate (more ‘domestic’ or more ‘European’). Such a finding would be all the more relevant, because there is some evidence found on the idea that there is, due to market pressures, a trend going on towards ‘tabloidization’ (e.g. Landmeier & Daschmann, 2011; Esser, 1999; McLachlan & Golding, 2000).
According to previous literature there is reason to think that they will produce different amounts of European frames. For instance, Trenz (2004) implicitly argues that quality papers are more ‘Europeanized’ than tabloids, although he does not test it empirically because he only focuses on Europeanization of quality papers: ‘‘one out of three political
articles in a European quality paper makes political reference to Europe, one out of five reports directly about at least one European issue’’ (311). And Kleinen-von Königlow (2012)
12
did make a comparison between quality papers and tabloids, and found that the quality of a paper increases the visibility of institutions, politics and speakers from other EU-countries. Furthermore, Schuck & De Vreese (2011) found that broadsheet papers are more European in their coverage of the news. On top of that, Boomgaarden et al.(2013) found positive relationships between quality papers and the visibility of EU news.
Theoretically, these findings are supported by research that shows that tabloid papers are more populist than quality papers (Mazzoleni et al., 2003; Hallin & Mancini, 2004) and therefore – taken in mind that populism is often related to anti-EU-attitudes - tabloids could be more national in their framing. Another theoretical reason why the distinction between quality press and tabloid press should have a significant prediction value for the degree of Europeanization of news frames is that, in general, readers of quality press are higher educated and more cosmopolitan than readers of tabloid press. Newspapers, in turn, adapt on the preferences of their readers (Chang & Lee, 1992). Pulling these theoretical arguments together, I expect that:
H3: Controversial socio-political issues, that can potentially be depicted as ‘domestic’ or ‘European’, are framed as a European concern by the quality press to a greater extent than by tabloids.
The fourth expectation is a conditional one: it is only suitable for testing if H3 is already confirmed. It namely raises the idea that the (significant) differences in the use of domestic and European frames between quality papers and tabloid papers will be significantly bigger in countries with a media culture that is politically outspoken than in countries that lack such a media culture. I think this is the case, because Schuck & De Vreese (2011) found that a more favourable opinion about the EU2 also leads to more EU coverage. Given that the conflict
2 They measured it per country.
13
between domestic and cosmopolitan preferences, as a consequence of globalization, has become a widely encompassing political theme (Kriesi et al., 2006), this leads me to think that when media preferences are more openly outspoken, then the preferences for using more domestic or more European frames will also be more clear. Thus, this fourth, conditional, hypothesis states that:
H4: The differences in the use of European and domestic frames between quality papers and tabloids are bigger in countries in which the press is more partisan than in countries in which the press is less partisan.
Methods
Case study: refugee crisis
For a useful assessment of the framing of the debate by the media, it is helpful when the issue at hand is suited both for framing to a domestic or a European context. To illustrate this point: I do not expect that an issue like national health service, a local election or a scandal within a political party would deliver much variance in the use of European frames by different media in different countries, for they have little potential to be framed as European concerns. A good example of an issue that is easily suitable to be framed both like a domestic and a European concern, however, is the refugee crisis.
This issue is well suited for testing the hypotheses, because it can be seen as, and is treated like, both a domestic and a European concern. The influx of migrants (mostly Syrian and Afghan, but also African) since 2013 affects both (!) the national and the European scale. Migrants streams are going through the whole of Europe, but mainly heading for countries like the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Europe-wide solutions are sought, but the consequences of the crisis are also dealt with on a national scale. In first instance, the European Union sought for a common European solution to divide immigrants among all
14
member states, but a compromise was never reached and the member states separately had to deal with the incoming migrants. Calls for strengthening the common shared European border were being raised, but some countries also strengthened their own border. Complaints about the political handling of the crisis are raised both at the level of local and national governments and the European Committee. The potential for framing the refugee crisis is, all in all, large at both the national and the European scale, and thus suited to measure my hypotheses.
Design
In order to assess the use of European and domestic framing of the refugee crisis by European newspaper media, I conducted a manual content analysis. Manual content analysis was selected because frames are rather implicit than explicit characteristics of a text: they are not about what is present, but how it is presented (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Frames thus can’t be merely conducted automatically, but they need a certain degree of interpretation. Therefore, the research will be conducted manually.
Moreover, I will assess whether these frames are dominant in a text or not. Multiple (conflicting) frames can exist in one and the same text, but it can still possibly occur that an article is mainly built around one frame. A frame is counted as dominant when at least half of the sentences in a text are reflecting that particular frame. I have no reason to expect that the results for domestic and European frames will significantly diverge between ‘regular’ and ‘dominant’ frames, but for the sake of certainty I will, from now on, split the hypotheses in a) applying to regular frames and b) applying to dominant frames.
15
The countries from which the newspapers will be drawn are Great-Britain and The Netherlands. These two countries are relevant for answering the overarching RQ for theoretical and practical reasons. They are, of course well suited to uses H1 and H3 because it does not matter which countries I choose there, for H1 is about general characteristic of newspapers and H3 is not so much about countries but about different newspapers. But they are also well suited to test H2 and H4, that are on country-specific differences.
Regarding H2 (which is about different positions in the EU), these countries are well chosen because The Netherlands and Great-Britain have a different position in European politics. The Netherlands is a member since 1951 and Great-Britain joined the union twenty two years later, in 1973 (European Union)3. And due to the UK’s geographical position, Great Britain has always been an ‘einzelgänger’ regarding EU-concerns, a stance that is confirmed by the Brexit-referendum and the resulting ‘leave’-outcome. On top of that, Great-Britain does not have the Euro, while the Netherlands does. This difference between the Netherlands and the UK allows us to test H2, that states the expectation that countries with a different historical ‘position’ in the EU will differ in the extent they treat domestic and European frames.
For H4 (which is about the country-specific outspokenness of the media), the Netherlands and the UK are also well chosen because they differ much in terms of their press culture. English newspapers, for instance, always endorse one specific party before the British elections are held (Bayram, 2013), a ritual in which Dutch newspapers do not participate. This indicates that newspapers in Great-Britain are more partisan than newspapers in the Netherlands, and therefore that the framing gap between quality papers and tabloids will be larger in the case of Great-Britain than in the Netherlands. This difference allows us to test
3
This is a reference to the website of the European Union (there is no year mentioned because the date is unknown), not to the European Union itself.
16
H4, that states that in countries with a culture in which newspapers are overtly partisan, the differences in the use of European frames between quality and tabloid press will be bigger.
Newspaper sample
For this research, I used quality and tabloid papers in the UK and the Netherlands. For the Netherlands, the quality paper chosen is NRC (circulation: ±200.000, according to Trouw (2015)), and for the UK I choose the Guardian (circulation: ±150.000, according to Statista a). Regarding tabloids, de Telegraaf (circulation: ±550.000, according to Trouw (2015)) in the Netherlands and the Daily Mail (circulation: ±1.500.000, according to Statista b) in Britain were chosen because they stand out as archetypes of these categories, with respectable amounts of circulations.
Time period
In order to compare the way these papers reflect the topic of the refugee crisis while avoiding the possible occurrence of comparing different exceptional events, I will include all reportings since May 2015 until August of that same year. In the weeks before May, the media began to spoke of a ‘crisis’ situation for the first time, due to the fact that within a week 1.2000 refugees were drowned in the Mediterranean Sea (Hammond, 2015). From that time on, a ‘European solution’ was sought between European countries – keeping in mind that within the EU-borders are open, so the distinct European countries had to take each others immigration policies into account. But next to this, individual nation states themselves kept on dealing with the real consequences of the crisis.
17
In order to assess a relevant body of articles on the refugee crisis in this time period, I will search in Nexis Lexis Academic on content written by the Guardian, the Sun, NRC and de
Telegraaf. The search string that I will use is ‘’vluchtelingen’’, ‘’migranten’’ and ‘’asielzoekers’’ in Dutch, and ‘’refugees’’, ‘’migrants’’ and ‘’asylum seekers’’ in English.
Variables
There are two types of independent variables in this paper. One is ‘newspapers’, which has as values 1. NRC, 2. De Telegraaf, 3. The Guardian and 4. The Daily Mail. The second independent variable is ‘country’, that has as values 1. UK and 2. The Netherlands. The third dependent variable is ‘types of newspapers’, which has as values 1. Quality press and 2. Tabloids.
The dependent variables that I want to investigate are subsets of frames. These frames can have two values: 1. domestic frames or 2. European frames. Moreover, these values are divided in several subvalues that encompass all aspects of the refugee crisis: A) economic, which relates to possible economic consequences of the refugee crisis; B) migration stream-related, which relates to the scale of the refugee crisis; C) governance, which relates to the scale of the legislative framework that is needed to solve the refugee crisis; D) cultural, which relates to scale on which the cultural differences between refugees and ‘us’ are treated and E) crime, which relates to the scale on which (presumed) illegal activities of refugees are taking place. In all these instances, the question in the codebook was: ‘‘Is the scale on which the
problem is presented in newspaper articles a European or a domestic concern?’’
I derived the variable A) from test samples (of newspaper articles) that I drew, in which sometimes the financial consequences of the refugee crisis were put forward. I derived the variables B) and C) from Brüggemann & Kleinen-von Königslöw (2009), who make a distinction between the ‘horizontal’ dimension of a phenomenon (the phenomenon itself,
18
which is in this case the refugee streams) and the ‘vertical’ dimension of this phenomenon (the institutions that can bring a solution to it, in this case the local, national and European institutions who try to govern the situation). Lastly, I derived the variables D) and E) from Vliegenthart & Roggeband (2007). Altogether, I think that these variables encompass the whole spectrum of issues that are related to the refugee crisis.
To capture the concept of ‘domestic concern’, I include the use of local (such as a single village) instances as being coded as domestic’.4
Also, in order to avoid methodological controversy, I exclude the use of single foreign countries (such as Germany or France) other than the Netherlands (when coding Dutch papers) and Great-Britain (when coding British newspapers), both as ‘national’ or as falling under the much wider scope of being ‘European’
In order to test the hypotheses, I first added the individual domestic and European sub-frames (e.g., economic, crime, etc.) into more general variables representing ‘domestic frames’ and ‘European frames’. This was done because this study’s primary interest is in the general use of domestic versus European frames by newspapers, not in the use of these sub-frames. And so no directional hypotheses were advanced about the specific sub-sub-frames. Furthermore, combining the numerous sub-frames allows for a more parsimonious presentation of the results. Nevertheless, I also assessed the results for each regular sub-frame and present the results in Appendix 3.
All the dependent sub frames have went through an intercoder reliability test, in which I trained the intercoder in two rounds of ten articles, with a final round afterwards of which the results were significantly satisfying and are included in the Appendix 2. As a sample for that final test, I used ten randomly chosen articles on the refugee crisis, taken from the Guardian, NRC and de Telegraaf.
For the codebook, please have a look at Appendix 1.
4
In the codebook (see appendix) and original dataset, a ‘national’ and a ‘local’ scale were initially treated separately. Later on, I computed the resulting outcomes for both types of frames, counting them as ‘domestic’.
19 Results
Before the results will be presented, I will first start with a general overview of the means of the various frames in the various newspapers. This will give some insight into what the general findings are, as summarized below in table 1. As can be seen, NRC uses (both regarding regular and dominant frames) more European than domestic frames per article, while the Daily Mail uses more domestic than European frames. Regarding regular frames, de Telegraaf and the Guardian both use more European frames than domestic frames, but for dominant frames they both score slightly higher on domestic frames than European frames. Name of
newspaper
N Frame type
Mean domestic frames per article
Mean of European frames per article
Mean difference NRC 69 Regular .48 .88 -.41 Dominant .14 .20 -.0580 Telegraaf 73 Regular .58 .82 -.25 Dominant .29 .26 .0274 Guardian 100 Regular .98 1.11 -.13 Dominant .24 .18 .0600
Daily Mail 113 Regular 1.43 .74 .69
Dominant .50 .11 .3894
Table 1. General overview of the means of domestic and European frames and mean differences, per outlet.
The first hypothesis proposed that the refugee crisis would be framed as a domestic concern
to a greater extent than a European one. The dependent variable used to test this hypothesis is
the mean difference between domestic frames and European frames. To test H1a, this variable captures the regular frames, and in order to test H1b, this difference was computed on the
20
dominant frames. One-sample T-tests are used for both H’s to test the mean difference regarding ‘domestic frames minus European frames’ and its’ significance. Table 2 presents an overview of the results.
Frame type
Mean domestic frames per article
Mean EU-frames per article Mean difference Sig. (2-tailed) of mean difference Regular .9437 .8901 .05352 .482 Dominant .3127 .1800 .13521 .000*
Table 2. The mean of domestic and EU frames, measured over all newspapers taken together (N=355).
The pattern of mean differences suggests that there were more domestic frames than European frames in the newspapers analysed. However, the results regarding the regular frames are not significant, and therefore H1a is rejected. In the case of H1b, however, which predicted that overall there would be more dominant domestic frames than dominant European frames, we find a significant result. Therefore H1b is confirmed.
The second hypothesis predicted that the refugee crisis is framed to a greater extent as
a European concern by newspapers in the Netherlands, because it is more integrated in the EU than the UK is. I again use the computed variable ‘domestic frames minus European
frames’ as a dependent variable, that clearly captures the comparison between European and domestic frames. To test this hypothesis, it is additionally necessary to compare between the means that both the Netherlands and the UK scored on European and domestic frames. In order to do this, the values for both regular and dominant frames, both domestic and European, were combined for the two Dutch newspapers (by adding up the values ‘NRC’ and ‘Telegraaf’) and for the two UK newspapers (by adding up the values ‘Guardian’ and ‘Daily Mail’). In order to compare the means between these two values, I ran an ANOVA of which the outcomes are presented in table 3.
21 Comparison: mean of
domestic frames minus EU frames per article
Frames type ANOVA Sum of squares df Mean square F sig. NL (mean -.32, st. dev. 1.302) UK (mean .31, st. dev. 1.465) Regular Between groups 33,720 1 33,720 17,145 .000* Within groups 694,263 353 1,967 Total 727,983 354 NL (mean -.01, st. dev. .674) UK (mean .23, st. dev. .681) Dominant Between groups 5,275 1 5,275 11,478 .001* Within groups 162,235 353 ,460 Total 167,510 354
Table 3. Comparison of the mean of domestic frames minus EU frames, between NL and UK papers (N=355).
Looking at the means for the number of ‘domestic frames minus European frames’- it is clear that Dutch newspapers score negatively, and thus employ mostly European frames, while British newspapers score positively, and thus use mostly domestic frames. Furthermore, these differences are highly significant, indicating that the Netherlands uses more European frames than the UK. This pattern, parallel for both regular and dominant frames, supports H2a and H2b, indicating that the Netherlands, as the country that is more integrated in the EU, scores higher on the use of European frames than the UK, that is less integrated in the EU.
H3 predicted that the refugee crisis is framed as a European concern by the quality
press to a greater extent than by tabloids. In order to make a comparison between types of
papers, I made the recoded variable ‘newspapers by type’, which includes the value ‘quality press’ (by adding up the values ‘NRC’ and ‘Guardian’) and the value ‘tabloids’ (by adding up the values ‘Telegraaf’ and ‘Daily Mail’). I again use the computed variable ‘domestic frames minus European frames’ as the dependent variable. The results are to be found below, in table 4.
22 Comparison: mean of
domestic frames minus EU frames per article
Frames type ANOVA Sum of squares df Mean square F sig.
Quality (mean -.24, st. dev. 1.369)
Tabloid (mean .32, st. dev. 1.442) Regular Between groups 28,285 1 28,285 14,270 .000* Within groups 699,698 353 1,982 Total 727,983 354 Quality (mean .01, st. dev.
.627)
Tabloid (mean .25, st. dev. .723) Dominant Between groups 4,910 1 4,910 10,659 .001* Within groups 162,600 353 ,461 Total 167,510 354
Table 4. Comparison of the mean of domestic frames minus EU frames in tabloids and quality papers (N=355).
The means for the number of ‘domestic frames minus European frames’ are - both for regular and dominant frames, lower for quality papers than for tabloids, which means that quality papers use more European frames than tabloids. This is in line with the hypotheses H3a and H3b. Furthermore, the ANOVA test decides that this relation is significant for both types of frames, which is why H3a and H3b can be confirmed.
For H4, the main focus is not on the mean difference between NRC - de Telegraaf and the Guardian - the Daily Mail, but lies on the difference between these two mean differences. More specifically, for the H4a and H4b to be confirmed, we expect to see that the differences in the use of regular and dominant European and domestic frames between quality papers and tabloids is bigger in countries in which the press is more partisan (UK) than in countries in which the press is less partisan (NL). To test this, ANOVA with post-hoc tests was run, capturing mean differences between all papers at the same time. I use the Games-Howell
post-23
hoc test, which is needed when variances are not equal (which is indeed the case). The variables tested were ‘domestic frames minus European frames’ as a dependent variable and the categorical measure ‘newspapers’ as an independent variable. The results are below in table 5.
Comparison:
domestic frames minus European frames per article
Frame type Mean difference within quality paper Mean differ- ence within tabloid Mean difference between quality paper - tabloid Sig. NRC – Telegraaf (NL) Regular -.41 -.25 -.159 .887
Guardian – Mail (UK) Regular -.13 69 -.820 .000*
NRC – Telegraaf (NL) Dominant -.0580 .0274 -.085 .873 Guardian – Mail (UK) Dominant .0600 -.3895 -.329 .002* Table 5. Comparison of the mean of domestic frames minus EU frames between all newspapers (N=355).
What stands out in this comparison, is that, both for regular and dominant frames, the difference between The Guardian - the Daily Mail is far wider than the difference for the NRC - de Telegraaf. Furthermore, these differences are highly significant for the Guardian - the Daily Mail, whereas these are not significant for NRC - the Daily Mail. Thereby, H4a and H4b are confirmed.
24
In order to ultimately assess the state of the European public sphere, I will conclude with a brief recap of the main findings, and what these say about the overall RQ stating ‘’To what
extent are political debates regarding contentious political issues framed in the media as ‘domestic’ or ‘pan-European’ concern?’’ I will also incorporate some significant
implications, that relate to the Europeanness of the public sphere, in this short summary. Four different hypotheses, divided in eight sub hypotheses and all related to this RQ, were tested by analysing the Dutch and British newspapers’ depiction of the refugee crisis.
The results regarding H1, that states that the refugee crisis is framed in newspapers as a national concern to a greater extent than a European one, turned out to have two different faces. The results are significant for what I called ‘dominant’ frames, but not for ‘regular’ frames. This means that there are more articles in which the domestic framing, in comparison to European framing, is dominant, while for the total amount of regular frames there exists an equal balance. We can thus say that, however the refugee crisis is mostly framed as a domestic issue, there is also a large portion of ‘Europeanness’ to be found in the media debate. The implication of these findings, however, is that we cannot yet speak of a fully developed ‘European public sphere-light’, by which Trenz (2004) meant a public sphere that consists of multiple ‘national’ audiences but with ‘European’ issues. The issues are still too much viewed by the media as being ‘domestic’.
While H1 was more meant to give an overview that functions as a starting point to answer the RQ, H2 and H3 were about whether types of papers and the EU-history of countries could predict that more European or more domestic framing would be employed by the newspapers. As expected, quality papers and countries that have a long history in the EU have more (both dominant and regular) EU-frames than tabloids and countries that are less well integrated in the EU. So it seems that, as already outlined in the conceptual part, the
25
more cosmopolitan nature of quality papers and a certain degree of ‘Europeanness’ of countries themselves contribute to the use of more EU-frames.
The last hypothesis (H4), also both significant at the regular and dominant level, appeared to be justly expecting that countries with a more polarized media culture harvest larger differences between quality papers’ and tabloids’ use in domestic and European frames. This means that H3 (the hypothesis on quality papers and tabloids) is even more applicable to countries with a more polarized media culture. This has a significant implication, given that tabloids have a far wider body of readership than the quality press: the more polarized the media culture is, the more domestic frames are being read compared to European frames.
Considering all the above, a short but comprehensive answer on the RQ along with it’s implications would be: the refugee crisis is these days mostly framed as a domestic one. This is just one single case, but a very representative one because it has both the potential to be framed as a domestic or a European issue. This indicates that we do not yet have a well functioning ‘European public sphere-light’. This is all we can say about the current state of the Europeanness of the news. But what is most important for the future, is three things. First is that the quality of newspapers has to rise, in order to get more European framing, because quality papers employ more European frames. So, not a ‘tabloidization’ is needed, but a reversed trend – although this does not seem very realistic at the moment. Second is that, simply put, more time is needed in order to get more European frames, because the longer countries are in the EU, the more European frames their media will use. Third is that the media culture must not polarize any further, because this will imply a loss of average European frames that citizens will read.
If we want to look at these implications with regards to the state of the public sphere and the European Union, which was the opening theme of this thesis, then we can say the following. It seems that the connection between the EU will stay problematic in the near
26
future, because of the lack of a much-needed supranational (European) public sphere that is a basic condition for the development of ‘European’ political loyalties among European citizens (as I explained in the introduction). While this trend seems to be counterattacked by the effect of countries getting more used to their stay inside the EU (an insight given by H2), this process might also need ‘help’ from a ‘reversed tabloidization’ (see H3) and a depolarization of media cultures (see H4). More research is needed, in order to identify whether these last two hypothetical developments are really taking place, or whether the reversed is the case.
However, also the present research has some serious shortcomings that call for further (and more thorough) research. The first and foremost limitation is that this was just a case study, containing the refugee crisis. Would the results be comparable if we also treated, for example, the Euro-crisis or the financial crisis? I think the case of the refugee crisis was exceptionally well suited to be treated in a framing study like this, because it has a great potentiality (which is, as we saw, fulfilled) to be treated as both a domestic or as a European concern. However, this question is somewhat more applicable when taking into concern the hypotheses about intercountry differences and differences between types of papers (H2, 3 and 4), which is why I think that if further research would treat other cases, this might also be of great interest.
Secondly, the number of newspapers might be broadened to get data that is more representative of the broad category ‘newspapers’. I already detected some slight distortion regarding H1, that has as an outcome that newspapers use mostly domestic frames. However, this was due to the fact that it was mainly the Daily Mail that was using this kind of frames. If I would let the Daily Mail out of the results, then the picture would be different. For this timespan I saw no other way than treating only four papers, but further research might take into account that this is not all too much.
27
The same disadvantage goes for the amount of countries in this research. This might seem less urgent because the differences between the Netherlands and the UK were very large, but it is exactly this great gap that might be explained for in more ways than I did (this research only focused on the degree of integration in the EU and press culture). So, apart from the fact that it might be useful to include more countries in the analysis, future research could also focus on including more explaining hypotheses. For example: is there a significant relationship between the type of media system a country is in, and the amount of domestic and European frames?
Another important limitation is the fact that I only used newspapers instead of other types of media. An interesting question to ask would be: would there be different results for the internet and television shows? This is a question of which the answer is beyond my imagination, simply because the internet and television employ more communication techniques than text (while text is overwhelmingly the main focus of newspapers). Therefore, I would like to see further research that deals with that kind of question.
Apart from the above limitations, that are related to the scope of the present research itself, there is another significant limitation that applies on the possible implications of this research. Until now, the interrelationship with the public (and its’ opinion) is not treated. But ultimately, of course, we want to know whether citizens that read or watch more European frames, will adapt these ‘Europeanness’ in their thinking. Are readers of the Guardian tending to view themselves more as a European citizen, than readers of the Daily Mail do because of the fact that they read the Guardian? I expect there might be a strong correlation between these two elements, but what would be most interesting is whether certain frames have real
effects on their viewers / readers. This kind of, I presume experimental, research lies beyond
the scope of this thesis, but still I think this thesis can be a good starting point for such behaviouristic research.
28
Despite these limitations, I think that this research has proved it added value to the existing literature on the Europeanness of the news. By employing a pioneering framing approach and the newspaper coverage of the refugee crisis as a relevant test case, this thesis can function as a fruitful point of reference for further debates on the European public sphere.
Literature
Bayram, S. (2013). Partisanship in the content and readership of British newspapers. Post war trend. Journal for Communication & Culture, 3(1), 72-87.
Boomgaarden, H.G., De Vreese, C.H., Schuck, A.R.T., Azrout, R., Elenbaas, M., Van Spanje, J.H.P. & Vliegenthart, R. (2013). Across time and space. Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union. Journal of Political Research, 52, 608–629.
Brüggemann, M. & Kleinen-von Königslöw, K. (2009). `Let's talk about Europe'. Why Europeanization shows a different face in different newspapers. European Journal of
Communication, 24(1), 27-48.
Brüggemann, M. & Kleinen-von Königslöw, K. (2013). Explaining cosmopolitan coverage.
European Journal of Communication, 28(4), 361-178.
Chang, T.K. & Lee J.W. (1992). Factors affecting gatekeepers’ selection of foreign news. A national survey of newspaper editors. Journalism Quarterly, 69(3), 554–561.
De Vreese, C.H. (2007). The EU as a public sphere. Living Reviews in European Governance, 2(3), 5-22.
Entman, R.M. (1993). Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm, Journal of
29
Esser, F. (1999). ‘Tabloidization’ of news a comparative analysis of Anglo-American and German press journalism. European Journal of Communication, 14(3), 291–324.
European Union. A peaceful Europe – the beginnings of cooperation. Retrieved from
https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/history/1945-1959_en.
Gleissner, M., & De Vreese, C.H. (2005). News about the EU Constitution. Journalistic challenges and media portrayal of the European Constitution. Journalism, 6(2), 221–242.
Habermas, J. (1974). The public sphere. An encyclopedia article (1964). New German
Critique, 3, 49-55.
Hallin, D. & Mancini, P. (2004) Comparing media systems: Three models of media and
politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hammond, T.G. (2015). The Mediterranean migration crisis. MES Insights, 6(4), 1-4.
Harcup, T. & O'Neill, D. (2001). What is news? Galtung and Ruge revisited. Journalism
Studies, 2(2), 261-280.
Kandyla, A.A. & De Vreese, C.H. (2011). News media representations of a common EU foreign and security policy. A cross-national content analysis of CFSP coverage in national quality newspapers. Comparative European Politics, 9, 52–75.
Kleinen-von Königslöw, K. (2012). Europe in crisis? Testing the stability and explanatory factors of Europeanization of national public spheres. International Communication Gazette 74: 443–463.
30
Koopmans, R. (2004). Integrated report. Cross-national, cross-issue, cross-time. The transformation of political mobilisation and communication in European Public Spheres,
Europub.com, 1-46.
Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S. & Frey., T. (2006). Globalization and the transformation of the national political space. Six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research, 45(6), 921 – 956.
Landmeier, C., & Daschmann, G. (2011). Im Seichten kann man nicht ertrinken? Boulevardisierung in der überregionalen deutschen Qualitätspresse. In R. Blum, H. Bonfadelli,
Imhof, K. & Jarren, O. (Eds.), Krise der leuchttürme öffentlicher kommunikation (177–191). Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
Mazzoleni, G. (2003) ‘The Media and the Growth of Neo-Populism in Contemporary Democracies’, in. Mazzoleni, J. Stewart and B. Horsfield (eds.), The Media and Neo-Populism. London: Praeger, pp. 1–20.
McLachlan, S., & Golding, P. (2000). Tabloidization in the British press: A quantitative investigation into changes in British newspapers, 1952–1997. In C. Sparks & J. Tulloch (Eds.), Tabloid tales: Global debates over media standards (pp. 76–90). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Peter, J., & De Vreese, C.H. (2004). In search of Europe. A cross-national comparative study of the European Union in national television news. The International Journal of
31
Pierson, P. (2000). Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics, American
Political Science Review, 94, 251–269.
Scheufele, D.A. & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda setting, and priming. The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9-20.
Schuck, A.R.T. & de Vreese, C.H. (2011). Finding Europe. Mapping and explaining antecedents of ‘Europeanness’ in news about the 2009 European Parliamentary elections.
Studies in Communication/Media, 1(2), 265–294.
Semetko, H.A., De Vreese, C.H., & Peter, J. (2000). Europeanised politics – Europeanised media? European integration and political communication. West European Politics, 23(4), 121–141.
Statista a. Circulation of The Guardian in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1st half 2003 to 2nd
half 2015 (in 1,000 copies). Retrieved from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/288278/circulation-trend-of-the-guardian-newspaper-uk/.
Statista b. Circulation of The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1st half 2003 to 2nd half 2015 (in 1,000 copies). Retrieved from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/288261/circulation-trend-of-the-daily-mail-newspaper-uk/.
Trenz, H.J. (2004). Media coverage on European governance. Exploring the European public sphere in national quality newspapers. European Journal of Communication, 19(3): 291–319.
· Trenz, H.J. (2008). Measuring the Europeanisation of public communication. The question of standards. European Political Science, 7, 273–284.
32
Trouw (2015, May 12). Oplages kranten dalen, en nrc.next verdwijnt misschien. Retrieved from
http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5133/Media- technologie/article/detail/4017394/2015/05/12/Oplages-kranten-dalen-en-nrc-next-verdwijnt-misschien.dhtml.
Vliegenthart, R. & Roggeband, C. (2007). Framing integration and immigration. Relationships between press and parliament in the Netherlands, The International Communication Gazette,
69(3), 295–319.
Appendix 1: Codebook Var01 - Story ID
Every article will be categorized consequently (1, 2, 3 etc.).
Var02 - Outlet A) 1. The Guardian A) 2. NRC B) 1. Daily Mail B) 2. De Telegraaf Var03 - Date
The article’s date of publication. For example: the 20th of June will be categorized as ‘0620’, thus as MM/DD.
Var04 - Title
The article’s heading (+ eventual subtitle)
Var05 - Author The article’s author(s)
33 Var06 - Length
The exact amount of words
Var07 – Frames
First, some general rules:
Code mentions of events taking place in local (from the perspective of the country's’ newspaper) areas as ‘local’. So, do this for the UK when coding British
newspapers and for the Netherlands when coding Dutch newspapers.
Do not code the mentions of (or parts of) single foreign countries (such as Germany or France). So, only code the Netherlands (when coding Dutch papers) and
Great-Britain (when coding British newspapers).
The unit of analysis is a frame, which could sometimes consist of one sentence but very often encompasses multiple sentences. So, explicitly do only code frames, and
do not code single sentences!
You only have to code the use of one type of frame maximum 1 time per article.
So, for example code the ‘European governance’ frame only one time per article.
But, of course, there still can be multiple types of frames within an article. For
example, it could be the case that one article consists of the ‘European governance’ frame, the ‘European migration’ frame and the ‘national governance frame. You have to code them all!
1. Local frames
34
Is the article about economic / financial consequences presented on a local scale (somewhere in Britain or the Netherlands), in relation to the refugee crisis?
- Example: the idea that more migrants will create extra pressure on / benefits for the local economy.
B) Migration flows
Is the article about migration flows presented on a local scale (somewhere in Britain or the Netherlands), in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: Highlighting the fact that a individual city or village (in the Netherlands or Great-Britain) has difficulties taking up refugees.
C) Governance
Is there a focus on the topic of local policy making (somewhere in Britain or the Netherlands), in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: protests (against the settling of asylum seekers) by a local political party or a mob.
Example: coverage of a local town meeting on how to organize the shelter of refugees.
D) Cultural
Is there a focus on cultural / religious / values-related clashes / differences, on a local scale (somewhere in Britain or the Netherlands), in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: focus on the idea that more islam / muslims is not good for the city village in which a particular asylum seekers facility is built.
Example: focus on the idea that multiculturality is a good thing, and / or that citizens of a particular local community do not have to be afraid about more muslims / islam.
35
Is there a focus on crime by refugees on a local scale (somewhere in Britain or the Netherlands), in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: alarms being raised about the potentiality that terrorists are hiding in refugee groups in order to plan attacks in Amsterdam / London.
Example: alarms being raised about refugees raping citizens, beating up each other or beating up local citizens somewhere in / around a local asylum seekers facility.
2. National frames
A) Economical
Is the article about economic / financial consequences presented on a national scale, in relation to the
refugee crisis?
- Example: the idea that more migrants will create extra pressure on / benefits for the national welfare state.
B) Migration flows
Is the article about migration streams presented on a national scale, in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: Highlighting the fact that the migration streams are mainly heading for one particular country, such as Netherlands or Britain.
Example: Highlighting the fact that an individual country (the Netherlands or Great-Britain) is entered by refugees.
C) Governance
36
Example: Calls for a national solution of the migration crisis, for example by setting up more border surveillances.
Example: Call for giving back power to individual nation states, so that the crisis can be handled more effectively.
Example: Protests (against the settling of asylum seekers) by a national political party.
D) Cultural
Is there a focus on cultural / religious / values-related clashes / differences on a national scale, in relation
to the refugee crisis?
Example: focus on the idea that more islam / muslims is not good for the Netherlands / Britain.
Example: focus on the idea that islam / muslims are not compatible with the religion, values, freedoms of lifestyle in the Netherlands / Britain.
Example: focus on the idea that multiculturality is a good thing, and / or that we in the Netherlands / Britain do not have to be afraid of more islam / muslims.
E) Crime
Is there a focus on crime by refugees on a national scale, in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: alarms being raised about the potentiality that terrorists are hiding in refugee groups in order to plan attacks in the Netherlands / London.
Example: alarms being raised about refugees raping citizens, beating up each other or beating up citizens in the Netherlands / London.
37 A) Economical
Is the article about economic / financial consequences presented on a European scale, in relation to the refugee crisis?
- Example: the idea that more migrants will create extra pressure on / benefits for European welfare.
B) Migration flows
Is the article about migration flows presented on a European scale, in relation to the refugee crisis?
- Example: Highlighting the fact that the migration streams are going through Europe (this
word, or a conjugation, has to be mentioned).
- Example: Highlighting the fact that Europe (this word, or a conjugation, has to be mentioned) has difficulties taking up refugees.
C) Governance
Is there a focus on the topic of European policy making, in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: Calls for a European solution of the migration crisis, for example by strengthening the ‘European common border’ or by dividing the refugees among all EU-member states.
Example: Calls for future European integration, so that the crisis can be handled more effectively.
Example: Calls for the exit of a European official like Jean-Claude Juncker, because of his poor handling of the refugee crisis.
D) Cultural
Is there a focus on cultural / religious / values-related clashes / differences on a European scale, in relation to the refugee crisis?
38
Example: focus on the idea that more islam / muslims is not good for Europe.
Example: focus on the idea that islam / muslims are not compatible with the religion, values, freedoms of lifestyle in Europe.
Example: focus on the idea that multiculturality is a good thing, and / or that we in Europe do not have to be afraid of more islam / muslims.
E) Crime
Is there a focus on crime by refugees on a European scale, in relation to the refugee crisis?
Example: alarms being raised about the potentiality that terrorists are hiding in refugee groups in order to plan attacks across Europe.
Example: alarms being raised about refugees raping citizens, beating up each other or beating up citizens throughout Europe.
Var08 - Valence
Does the frame have a positive, a neutral or a negative tone with respect to refugees?
Var09 – Dominance of framing
Is the article primarily framed as a national or European concern? This is the case when at least
half of the
words in an article consist of (one or more) national or European frame(s). So, here we do not focus
on the subframes (financial, migration flows, governance, cultural or crime) but on the main frames (national or European). This does not have to apply on each article per se.
Appendix 2: intercoder reliability
39
1. Local financial 1 YES
2. Local migrational 1 YES
3. Local governance 0 NO
4. Local cultural 1 YES
5. Local crime 1 YES
6. National financial 1 YES
7. National migrational .7467 YES
8. National governance 1 YES
9. National cultural 1 YES
10. National crime .7467 YES
11. European financial 1 YES
12. European migrational .7912 YES 13. European governance .7912 YES
14. European cultural 1 YES
15. European crime 1 YES
16. Dominant frames .8376 YES
Table 6. Results of the intercoder reliability test on sub frames (N=10).
Appendix 3: sub frames
Name of newspaper
Frame type Financial Migrational Governance Cultural Crime
NRC Domestic .00 .19 .23 .03 .03
European .00 .39 .49 .00 .00
Telegraaf Domestic .10 .19 .19 .03 .07
40
Guardian Domestic .09 .44 .45 .00 .00
European .05 .51 .55 .00 .00
Daily Mail Domestic .13 .72 .48 .01 .10
European .03 .35 .31 .00 .05
Total Domestic .09 .43 .36 .01 .05
European .03 .40 .44 .00 .02
