"Legitimizing Europe? News media and the reporting of European Union politics"

Hodess, Robin. (1997) "Legitimizing Europe? News media and the reporting of European Union politics". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (1560Kb) | Preview

Abstract

The explosion of European Union (EU) authority and the progress made toward European integration in the late 1980s has led policy-makers and academics alike to examine the appropriateness of power at the European union level of governance. The very reinvigoration of the European Union, therefore, has brought with it a number of questions regarding the nature and direction of European governance--many visible in difficulties faced by the EU in the wake of the Treaty on European Union. Perhaps one of the most fundamental of these issues has been that of EU legitimation. In other words, as the European Union has gained in stature, taking on and aspiring to new functions across the policy spectrum, the issue of its legitimacy has come to the fore. Interest in the legitimacy of EU, this paper argues, leads to the study of news coverage, since media have an important function in the legitimation of political systems. 'If' it is true that politics in Western democracies has to be justified in public, it can reasonably be assumed that the public discourse about supranational governance assumes a decisive role in the process of legitimation of European governance structures' (Jachtenfuchs 1994: 17). In other words, understanding media presentation of the European Union is an important aspect of understanding the nature of and reactions to the integration debate. This paper will investigate selected coverage of the European Union in British and German news media between 1985 and 1991 as a means of examining the issue of legitimation within the European Union.

Actions (login required)