News Coverage of the Enlargement of the European Union and Public Opinion: A Case Study of Agenda-Setting Effects in the United Kingdom Oya Dursun University of Texas at Austin odursun@mail.la.utexas.edu Abstract While the British government has largely been in favor of the recent round of European Union (EU) enlargement, the British public opinion was mostly against it. To account for the gap between public opinion and official policy on enlargement in the United Kingdom, this project scrutinizes the way the British media treats the issue of enlargement following the Laeken Council of December 2001 up until the day of enlargement – 1st of May 2004. The research is contextualized in agenda-setting theory. This project tests both the first and second-level agenda-setting effects, and the consequences of agenda-setting for public understanding and evaluations of the enlargement of the EU. To what extent the frequency of the coverage of enlargement influences how important people consider it to be? Do the frames the media apply translate into patterns the public uses to interpret those affairs? What are the effects of frames on public opinion toward enlargement? To provide answers to these questions, this paper combines quantitative content analysis and survey data through a comparison of the trends in the Eurobarometer surveys with enlargement-related news coverage in The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Mail. Keywords: agenda-setting, EU enlargement, British media, public opinion Paper prepared for presentation at the European Union Studies Association’s Ninth Biennial International Conference, 31 March-2 April 2005, Austin, TX, U.S.A. Introduction What is the relationship between policy, public opinion and the media? This question has been investigated extensively in the U.S. setting, yet still remains a relatively overlooked one in the European context. The knowledge about how the media covers European political affairs and how citizens in different Member States react to news about European affairs and processes of integration is very limited. Also there is a lack of integrating theoretical frameworks in studies on the visibility of European issues in the media (Semetko et al. 2000). This paper attempts to address these deficiencies in the political communication literature through an examination of the agenda-setting functions of print media in the United Kingdom (UK) on the issue of the enlargement of the European Union (EU) in May 2004. Besides being a political process, accession of ten new Member States is also an important socio-cultural enterprise with widespread repercussions. The enlargement issue stopped to be purely technical, and started to affect the daily lives of individuals. Consequently, Europe has become more “visible” and as such more liable to arouse public disquiet. While the British government has been in favor of the latest eastern enlargement of the EU, the majority of both the British public were against enlargement. As the legitimacy of elite actions depends upon the level of public support for European integration processes, it is important to study the effects of the coverage of these issues on public opinion (Rohrschneider 2000, Meyer 1999). The media are the principal means by which majorities of people receive information about policy issues in general, and the EU in particular (Eurobarometer 61, Page and Shapiro 1992, De Vreese 2003). According to Standard Eurobarometer (EB) 61, 50 percent of the British people prefer to get information about enlargement from daily newspapers. “Which aspects of an issue are covered in the news – and the relative emphasis on these various aspects of an issue – makes a considerable difference in how people view that issue” (McCombs 2000, p. 7). Hence, this paper looks in the way media treats the issue of enlargement, and scrutinizes media’s effects on public opinion in order to account for the gap between British public opinion and official policy. Although EU issues generally receive low attention in the news in most European countries; EU’s latest round of enlargement has been one of the most highly visible issues concerning Europe. As such, enlargement provides an opportunity for an interesting case study of the effects of news coverage on public opinion of a historic European event. The research is contextualized in agenda-setting theory. It tests both the first- and second-level agenda-setting effects of media in the British context through an exclusive focus on the news coverage of enlargement in The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Mail from January 1, 2002 to May 1, 2004. Moreover, enlargement is an “unobtrusive issue”: personal experience on enlargement during the time frame of this study was greatly limited, if not non-existent. For such issues, need for orientation is largely satisfied through the use of the mass media and that the degree of media influence increases with greater exposure (McCombs, 2005, p. 64). Greater insight into the effects of media on the issue of enlargement which will be gained with the results of this paper has significant implications for possible future referenda on the subsequent rounds of enlargement. This study also provides a test for the existence of democratic deficit, a widely debated concept in the EU studies literature. Theoretical Background Research in this paper is contextualized in agenda-setting theory. Agenda-setting theory posits that elements that are prominent on the press agenda, both “objects” and their “attributes”, frequently become prominent on the public agenda. This idea of an agenda-setting role of the press has its origins in Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion, which begins with a chapter titled “The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads.” He argues that the press is a major contributor to those pictures in our heads (Lippmann 1922). The term “agenda setting” is first coined by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw to describe the correspondence between the ranking of major issues on the press and public agendas in their pioneering work (McCombs and Shaw 1972). Since the 1970s, the agenda-setting influence of the press has been widely replicated. Traditional (or first-level) agenda-setting theory emphasizes how mass media, elites, and the public interact and influence one another to affect issue salience (McCombs and Shaw 1972, Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman 1993, McCombs and Reynolds 2002). Traditional agenda-setting effects point to the visibility and perceived importance of a problem or an issue due to its visibility or salience in the media. As Bernard Cohen noted in his seminal work The Press and Foreign Policy, the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” (Cohen 1963, p. 13). Cues repeated day after day effectively communicate the importance of each topic (McCombs 2000, p. 1). The more coverage an issue receives, the more concern individuals have with the issue. In other words, individuals learn how concerned they should be through the amount of coverage the issue receives (Wanta 1997, McCombs 2000). For each “object” there also is an agenda of “attributes” because when the media and the public think and talk about an object, some attributes are emphasized, others are given less attention, and many receive no attention at all (McCombs 2000, p. 6). Since the agenda-setting functions of mass media are vital at both the “object” (the things on which the attention of the media and the public are focused) and “attribute” (characteristics and traits that describe the object) levels, agenda-setting effects are not only limited to affecting issue salience (i.e. first-level agenda-setting). The second-level of agenda setting adds to the previous agenda-setting research by examining a much more complex digestion of content: it examines how media organizations select and present certain characteristics and properties of an object and how that selection and presentation influence the public’s perception of an object and its attributes.1 The aspects of issues selected for attention by the media influence the public’s perception of these issues (McCombs 2000, p. 7). This effect is also known as framing. Framing is most commonly defined as “select[ing] some aspects of a perceived reality and mak[ing] them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman 1993, p. 52, original emphasis). It constitutes a second-level agenda-setting effect (McCombs 1997). Framing effects refer to changes in evaluations and interpretations as the result of aspects made salient through selection, organization and emphasis. “Thinking of frames as attributes of an object provides the theoretical link between agenda-setting and framing research” (Hsiang and McCombs 2004, p. 24). The United Kingdom is renowned for its skepticism and reluctance with respect to the EU issues. Various studies on British political communication literature point out to the pessimism of the public on EU issues and Euro-skeptic nature of the British press.2 Carey and Burton (2004) point out that research in the British context has found that the media asserts influence on attitudes and behavior and that these effects are significant, although relatively small.3 Looking at the impact of the press on attitudes towards monetary union, for instance, Curtice (1999) finds that there was no significant evidence that newspapers influenced their readers on this issue either in the period between elections or in the campaign leading up to the 1997 election.4 A number of recent studies have identified the importance of certain frames in the news by focusing on their consequences for the public’s interpretation of events and issues.5 Pippa Norris (2000), for instance, dealing with the influence of the media on attitudes towards European integration finds that, when an attentive public receives extensive media coverage of an issue that displays a consistent directional bias, the media are likely to have an impact sufficient enough to change public attitudes at the aggregate level. She finds a strong relationship between negative press coverage of monetary union and decreasing levels of aggregate support both for the euro and the EU in general.6 But she warns that the direction of causality in the relationship between media coverage and aggregate public attitudes on monetary union cannot be established. Anderson and Weymouth (1999) conduct a detailed analysis of the discourse of the British press on issues relating to European integration during the general election campaign of 1997 and during the British presidency of the EU in 1998. They find that articles within the Euro-skeptic press during this time (Sun, Mail, Express, Times and Telegraph) explicitly aimed to influence attitudes on European issues, and the purpose of this discourse was to influence and to persuade their readers of the non-acceptability of monetary union.7 Research Questions and Hypotheses This study aims at testing both the first- and second-level agenda-setting effects of media and the consequences of agenda-setting in terms of opinions and attitudes towards enlargement in the British context, focusing exclusively on the coverage of The Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Mail. To assess media effects on public opinion, this paper draws on two different sources of data. First, it utilizes several EB – both Standard and Flash – survey data to measure people’s attitudes towards the latest round of EU enlargement. Secondly, it conducts a quantitative content analysis on the above-mentioned major print media outlets in the UK. a. First-Level Agenda-Setting Effects To test for the first-level agenda-setting functions of the British media, this study asks to what extent the frequency of the coverage of enlargement influences how important people consider it to be. Following the theory, one would expect that the higher the frequency of enlargement coverage is on the media agenda, the higher the perceived importance of this issue will be on the public agenda. Since name recognition is a necessary condition for salience,8 this study focuses on the name recognition of enlargement in the British and public, which is available in the Eurobarometer survey data. Hypothesis 1: Media salience of enlargement will be positively correlated with its public salience – i.e. the proportion of the public who recognize enlargement. The public agenda is measured through survey research. Both the Standard Eurobarometer surveys and the Flash Eurobarometer surveys on enlargement ask the following question to determine the salience of enlargement for people: “Before this interview, had you already heard of the enlargement of the European Union?” The available answers for this question are: yes (1) and no (0). As a test of first-level agenda setting effects, this research plots the average amount of enlargement-related coverage per month against the percentage of Eurobarometer respondents who indicated their awareness of enlargement. It relied on simple correlation to test the statistical significance of the relationship between enlargement coverage and the proportion of respondents who expressed that they are aware of the latest round of enlargement. b. Second-Level Agenda-Setting Effects Second-level agenda-setting theory holds that media not only shape the salience of “objects” in public opinion, but “attributes” of these objects as well. The prominence of an issue’s attributes in the “pictures in our heads” is influenced by the pattern of attributes in the press coverage for that issue. Regarding the second-level agenda-setting effects, this paper investigates if the media coverage of enlargement tells people “how to think about it”, besides telling them “what to think about”. In this study, “object” is the enlargement of the EU and the “attributes” are the various traits that define the images of enlargement. To investigate the second-level agenda-setting effects, a content analysis of substantive “attributes” of enlargement is conducted. It is assumed here that the public support for enlargement is dependent on the perceived consequences of enlargement by people. As such, this study employs “political,” “economic,” and “socio-cultural” consequences of enlargement as attributes. Media frames (or attributes) analyzed in this study are directly extracted from the Flash Eurobarometer survey questionnaires. The main research questions at this level are: What are the effects of these news frames on attitudes toward enlargement? Do the frames the media apply to European affairs translate into patterns the public uses to interpret those affairs? Hypothesis 2: The more salient an image attribute is in the press coverage of enlargement, the more likely the people are to describe enlargement in terms of that attribute (i.e. attributes of enlargement emphasized by the media will correlate with enlargement attributes salient to public). By manipulating the relative saliencies of various consequences of enlargement, media has a great potential to impact public opinion on the issue. Linking the framing concept to public opinion and enlargement requires an identification of the predominant frames in the coverage of enlargement. The results of content analysis are then compared with the survey data on public’s attitudes on the consequences of enlargement. Predominant frames in the coverage of enlargement over time are examined in order to see whether the frames the media apply translate into frames the public uses to evaluate enlargement. Is news about enlargement excessively concerned with political consequences, economic consequences, or socio-cultural consequences of the enlargement? Then the same question is asked for the public’s framing of enlargement. For the analysis of second-level agenda-setting effects, rank order correlation is conducted. After creating dichotomous variables for “peace,” “moralduty,” “stronger,” “expensive for the country,” etc., I conduced a rank ordering between the public and the press agendas. Method Time Frame Time frame for this study is from January 2002 to May 2004. January 2002 is chosen to be the starting date of the time frame since on 14th and 15th December 2001, the Laeken European Council declared that the accession process was “irreversible” and stressed the EU’s determination to bring the negotiations with those countries ready to join to a close by the end of 2002. In October 2002, the Commission recommended concluding the accession negotiations with Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia by the end of 2002. The Copenhagen European Council, held on December 2002, concluded negotiations with the ten candidate countries listed above, and set 1st of May 2004 as the accession date. On April 9, 2003, the European Parliament gave its assent to the accession of the ten acceding states. The Treaty of Accession was signed on April 16, 2003. May 1, 2004 marked a historic moment as Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the EU. Besides its chronological importance, another rationale for selecting this time frame is the availability of more frequently conducted public opinion surveys by Eurobarometer (Standard, Special, and Flash Eurobarometer Surveys on Enlargement).9 Standard Eurobarometer surveys are usually conducted twice a year. During the time frame of this study, ten public opinion surveys were conducted on enlargement. This enables a closer comparison of news coverage and survey results and makes the results of this study more valid. Having the polling data from surveys conducted frequently during the period of approximately two-and-a-half years is appropriate to account for changes in people’s attitudes towards enlargement in time.10 Research Design This study combines content analysis and survey data. It compares the trends in Eurobarometer polls to enlargement-related news coverage in the UK, and examines the computerized media contents of leading British press outlets using the Lexis-Nexis database. According to the Standard Eurobarometer surveys analyzed in this study, daily newspapers comes second to the TV in being the most popular sources of information on the EU, chosen by 50 percent of the UK sample (Eurobarometer 61). The British newspapers that are content analyzed in this study include elite/ quality newspapers as well as a major tabloid, with the highest circulation rates in Britain: The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Mail. In the original research design of this study, The Sun was planned to be included in our content analysis; nevertheless, since only the Irish version of this paper is available through the Lexis-Nexis database; it is replaced by another popular British tabloid – the Daily Mail. The Guardian is one of Britain’s oldest newspapers with a well-respected national and international reputation. It has maintained a radical, left of center editorial stance ever since its foundation. The Times – Britain’s newspaper of record – represents the conservative voice in the UK. Including The Daily Mail in analysis enables us to test for the homogeneity of press agendas between tabloids and broadsheets. Data This analysis draws on two sources of data: polls taken by the Eurobarometer between 2002 and 2004; and a content analysis of press coverage of enlargement of the EU in Britain. Eurobarometer survey polls all used a probability sampling procedure and were based on approximately 1,000 respondents. The unit of analysis is the entire text of articles. This study content analyzes the population of all newspaper articles that concentrate on enlargement in the media under focus in Britain. A census is deemed more appropriate for this study since it covers a shorter period of time. In the selection of our sample of media content, I aimed both for elite newspapers and tabloid press from both sides of the left–right divide with a high circulation and considerable influence on other types of media, as well as on the political system. These papers can be considered as influential sources of information for other media, as well as a good cross-section of national press opinion on socio-economic and political issues. Regarding the first-level effects, a keyword search is conducted to identify the volume of media attention devoted to enlargement. As has been the case in most agenda-setting studies, the salience in the media of the issue is defined in terms of the number of stories (e.g. McCombs and Kiousis 2004; King, 1997; McCombs and Shaw, 1972; Rogers and Chang, 1991). Articles that contain keywords – European Union enlargement, EU enlargement and accession – in the headline or the lead paragraphs are included in analysis. In a second step I eliminated all the articles in our selection which were either duplicates (due to the different editions of newspapers), or were not sufficiently relevant: for example, if the keyword appeared just as a passing remark in one sentence or in an irrelevant context. The selection included editorials and opinion pieces as well as news stories of more than two paragraphs. The final dataset contained 342 newspaper articles. Coding is conducted manually by two native speakers of British English.11 Coders are trained before the coding and supervised during the coding stage. The frequencies of these articles are counted, and then matched with the level of public salience. A team of coders is trained and supervised. Written coding instructions, a copy of the codebook, copies of newspaper articles, and coding spreadsheet are provided to coders. The training sessions familiarized coders with the purpose of the research, the content that will be coded, and the codebook that will be used. Ethical standards of content analysis research are also emphasized in the training session. Each article was coded for the following variables: “peace,” “moralduty,” “stronger,” “difftotake,” “histnatural,” “countless,” “unemployment,” “expensivecountry,” “expandmarkets,” “CAP,” “welfare system,” “cultricher,” “immigration,” “drugsmug,” “illegalimmig,” “remotecitizens.” After repeated pretesting of the codebook to determine the reliability of coding decisions, a sample of articles from each newspaper is coded. Intercoder reliability tests are conducted on a randomly selected subsample of 10% of the news stories (34 articles). To ensure intercoder reliability, several pretests were conducted till Scott’s pi reached 86 percent across the variables of content analysis.12 Once the final version of the codebook is drafted, coders started coding each article directly onto SPSS spreadsheet. The average monthly coverage of enlargement-related news in the Guardian and The Times were several times larger than in The Daily Mail. Because of The Mail’s limited coverage of enlargement, the analysis is corrected to adjust for the low reliability of Mail scores in months with very few sampled articles. To correct for sampling method, the weight variable was utilized to adjust for the differing probabilities that cases have of being selected in a sample. For measuring public salience, this study employs an indirect measure – name recognition of enlargement – that is available in Eurobarometer survey data. The assumption is that people must be able to recognize enlargement in order to consider it salient. Name recognition is a necessary condition for and can serve as an indirect measure of salience when other options are unavailable (McCombs and Kiousis 2004). For exploring the second-level agenda-setting effects, the agenda of attributes to be analyzed include three main categories:13 1) Political consequences of enlargement (i.e. effects of enlargement on the EU decision-making process; EU’s standing in the international political arena; impact on peace and stability in Europe; historically natural; effect on the weight of Britain within the EU, etc.); 2) economic consequences of enlargement (i.e. effects of enlargement on un/employment; the cost of funding of new Member States; investment opportunities in a bigger market; impact on the Common Agricultural Policy; and its impact on the social welfare system); and 3) socio-cultural consequences of enlargement (i.e. impacts of enlargement on cultural life; immigration from new EU member states; the fight against drug smuggling and organized crime; illegal immigration; EU institutions’ relations to local populations). To what extent concerns about enlargement’s political consequences in the media are mirrored in public opinion? To test whether agenda setting or second-level agenda setting resulted from the newspapers’ framing of enlargement, the content analysis data were compared with the questions asked by the Eurobarometer polls that relate directly to the second-level of agenda setting. Using the Flash EB survey results, the correspondence between the news agenda of attributes and the public agenda of attributes on enlargement is calculated to test for attribute agenda-setting effects. The results of content analysis are compared with the survey data on public’s attitudes on the consequences of enlargement (using Spearman’s Rho). Results To better account for the first-level agenda-setting effects, this paper at first focused on a time period under which three surveys were conducted in two months: Flash EB 132.1 - September 2002; Standard EB 58.1 - October – November 2002; and, Flash EB 132.2 - November 2002. Hence it analyzed the media coverage between 05/07/02 and 11/26/02. As can be seen from the figure below, the first-level effects by the media coverage have become prevalent among public with only a time-lag of one month from September to October 2002. TSPLOT (from May 2002 to November 2002) TSPLOT (from January 2002 to May 2004) *Correlation is significant at the 0.10 level (one-tailed) We can observe that the Pearson correlation between public awareness and press coverage of enlargement is .26. So, we would reject the null hypothesis that there is no statistically significant relationship between the amount of press coverage and the public awareness of enlargement of the EU. Hence the results of the first-level agenda-setting analysis solidly concurs the existence of a transfer of issue salience from the media to the public. As the issue of enlargement received more coverage by the newspapers, the British public became more familiar with it. Of the 342 articles, the political consequences and economic consequences frames are adopted equally – approximately 57 percent each (57.3 percent, and 56.5 percent, respectively); and 53.1 percent adopted the socio-cultural consequences frame. Hence we can conclude that each general consequence of enlargement was covered almost equally. In the cross-tabulation procedure, the chi-square tests conducted on each frame and each newspaper revealed statistically significant results for the social consequences frame.14 While The Daily Mail has a positive relationship; the other two newspapers have negative relationship with socio-cultural consequences frame. This emphasizes how a tabloid deals more closely with the social consequences of an important European event. The EB survey data suggest that although the percentage of people who have already heard of enlargement in the UK is well below the EU15 average, issue salience increases among people with an increase in the enlargement-related press coverage as the actual date of enlargement approaches. Hence, the British public learned how concerned they should be through the amount of coverage enlargement received. As long as the content analysis of the three papers goes, we can conclude that the coverage of the Times and the Guardian was almost identical. The coverage of the Daily Mail was, on the other hand, quite different from the two broadsheets. First of all, the number of articles allotted to enlargement was significantly lesser than the number of articles assigned in the Times and the Guardian. Secondly, the Daily Mail’s coverage was more negative on the effects of enlargement, and was more critical of the government’s policies on enlargement. This was especially apparent on the issue of immigration. The tabloid has criticized the way the government has treated the issue of free movement of labor, and warned with a heavy language that this issue will cause lots of problems ranging from its effects on the welfare system, the education system, and unemployment in Britain. SOCCODIC * TIMES SOCCODIC * GUARDIAN SOCCODIC * DAILYMAI Results of a series of chi-square tests between the newspaper coverage and three main consequences of enlargement revealed that there is a statistically significant relationship between the socio-cultural consequences of enlargement and the way three newspapers under focus of this study covers this issue. The most significant relationship was observed between the coverage of the Daily Mail and the socio-cultural consequences of enlargement. This is probably due to the tabloid format and the populist framing of this particular paper. Analysis of how enlargement is described in the press and by the public established a ranking of its attributes. In turn, these rankings on each agenda were compared to determine the strength of the press’ attribute agenda-setting influence on British public. When doing that the “affective attributes” of enlargement were taken into account. The articles were previously coded according to the negativity/positivity scale (ranging from -2 to 0 to +2). But due to low levels of inter-coder reliability, the -2 and -1, and +2 and +1 were merged to achieve greater level of reliability. After that, a rank ordering of the press coverage of various aspects of enlargement and the public’s rating of the importance of these aspects was undertaken. Below are the results of this analysis for the coverage from December 2002 to March, 26 2003, and the results of Flash EB 140 survey which was executed from 21st to 23rd of March 2003. Nonparametric Correlations Correlations Newscover Flash140 Spearman's rho Newscoverage Correlation Coefficient 1.000 .188 Sig. (2-tailed) . .455 N 16 16 Flash140 Correlation Coefficient .188 1.000 Sig. (2-tailed) .455 . N 16 16 Although the results of this rank order correlation was not statistically significant, the relationship between the news coverage and the Flash EB 140 public opinion data points to a positive correlation on the various consequences of enlargement. The reason for its insignificance might be the small N, which is 39 newspaper articles. TSPLOT of Newspaper Coverage One Month before each Flash EB surveys As can be seen from the above figure, the largest difference in coverage has been observed on the issue of both illegal immigration and immigration. Increasingly, more and more newspaper articles started to cover the possibility that illegal immigration will become a problem in Britain. Most of the newspaper articles criticized government’s “soft touch” on asylum and immigration. This effect was most apparent in Daily Mail’s coverage. If we take a closer look on the above graph which compares public attitudes on the specific consequences of enlargement as depicted in the Flash Eurobarometer 132.2 survey data and media’s treatment of these attributes one month before the fieldwork of the survey; we can see that regarding the second-level effects in most attributes, the public opinion and the media has been at odds. Also, as we look at the above graph comparing the public opinion survey and news coverage from December to March 2003, we can see that both in the media and in the public there are rising concerns on increase in the number of Eastern European citizens coming to Britain both legally and illegally. As a side effect, there is a parallel concern that immigration would lead to a rise in the unemployment level. The second-level emphasizes the attributes of public issues that should concern the public. So far, the research does not point out to strong second-level effects on public opinion. But more in-depth studies should be conducted. The non-significant relationships may be due to the small population sizes of the study. Since the coverage of enlargement was limited, this study could not get a hold of a large N. The coverage of enlargement reached its peak in April 2004, and even then only a total of 45 newspaper articles have been published a month.15 As can be seen from the above graph, the number of enlargement-related articles have fluctuated over time. It has especially reached peaks during the European Council meetings. And as the date of enlargement has approached it increased considerably. One methodological issue needs to be addressed here. There is no guarantee that the media coverage was actually seen and processed by the respondents to the Eurobarometer polls. Exposure is an important variable in the agenda-setting process.16 However, the three newspapers here have the largest circulations of any newspaper in the region. Previous research also suggests that large newspapers in a region can set the agenda of smaller papers. Thus, the agenda of attributes in these three papers could have been filtered down to smaller papers and other media, making the media agenda accessible to all respondents throughout the country. Discussion The 1972 referendums in Ireland, Denmark, Norway and France marked the public’s first direct participation in Community affairs. Britain’s referendum on continued EC membership in 1975 broadened the public’s role in deciding the future course of integration. The direct elections of the European Parliament have institutionalized this trend.17 And now that there are increasing signs that referenda will be held in several member states of the EU for the Turkish membership, the importance of convincing the public becomes more visible. Enlargement issue brought with it a number of controversies raised in the British public. Take, for example, the economic consequences of enlargement: since the funding of enlargement is mostly dependent upon the former EU15 Member States, informing public opinion about enlargement and gaining public support in these countries is essential. Some opponents of enlargement fear the arrival of cheap labor from the new Member States, or that enlargement will increase drug trafficking and organized crime in their countries. On the other hand, some proponents of enlargement think that an enlarged European Union will be better off economically, and play a stronger political role on the international scene despite increased difficulties in the decision-making process. Public opinion has forced a change on government positions on the free movement of labor and British immigration policy in overall. As a result of the heightened alarm in the British media, especially in the tabloids, there emerged growing concerns among the British public about more and more Eastern Europeans flying to Britain with a “one-way ticket”. While the British government was pursuing a liberal policy towards asylum and immigration; as a result of the public pressure, the government at the final hour, changed its position and applied a number of limitations to the free movement of labor coming from Eastern Europe. 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ANNEX I: The Names and the Field Research Dates of Eurobarometer Surveys to be used in this Research Standard Eurobarometer (EB) 56.3 - January – February 2002 Standard EB 57.1 - March – May 2002 Flash EB 132.1 - September 2002 Standard EB 58.1 - October – November 2002 Flash EB 132.2 - November 2002 Flash EB 140 - March 2003 Standard EB 59.1 - March – April 2003 Standard EB 60.1 - October – November 2003 Standard EB 61.0 - February – March 2004 * Standard Eurobarometer public opinion data are available through the ICPRS website. * Flash Eurobarometer on Enlargement data are gathered through the University of Cologne’s Central Archive for Empirical Social Research Data Service. ANNEX II: Chi-Square Tests When I conducted chi-square tests on the specific consequences of enlargement and each of the newspapers under study, I have found several statistically significant relationships. For instance, the Guardian mostly emphasizes the peaceful consequences of enlargement in the European continent. PEACEDIC * GUARDIAN Or when we analyze the crosstabulation of peaceful consequences of enlargement and the coverage of Daily Mail, we can see that there is a significant negative relationship between these two variables. This may signify that the Daily Mail has been more skeptical about the peace and stability implications of enlargement. PEACEDIC * DAILYMAIL Also, while there is a significant positive relationship between the coverage of the Guardian and the moral implications of enlargement in terms of the reuniting of European continent for the first time after the end of the Cold War; there is a negative significant relationship between the coverage of the Daily Mail and the moral duties of reuniting Europe. Here again, the skeptical attitude of the Daily Mail is obvious. MORALDIC * GUARDIAN MORALDIC * DAILYMAIL EXPENSIVEDIC * DAILYMAIL As can be observed from the above statistics, the Daily Mail covered the issue of enlargement as expensive for the UK. This is another point supporting the observation that the Daily Mail treats the issue of enlargement with caution. COUNT-LESSDIC * GUARDIAN Surprisingly, the Guardian has framed enlargement as creating a situation in which the UK will count less within the 25-membered Union; while the Daily Mail has framed it as an opportunity in which Britain will count more within an enlarged EU. COUNT-LESSDIC * DAILYMAIL HISNADIC * GUARDIAN HISTORICALLYNATURALDIC * DAILYMAIL The framing of enlargement as a historically natural process again points us to some expected results. Previous two chi-square tests reveal that the Daily Mail does not frame enlargement as a historically natural process, while the Guardian frames it as a justified and natural development. SETTLEINOURCOUNTRYDIC * GUARDIAN SETTLDIC * DAILYMAI On the issue of immigrants settling in Britain, both the Guardian and the Daily Mail shows similar patterns with differing intensities. They both framed enlargement as leading to a large number of immigrants settling in Britain, but the Mail has underlined it relatively more vigorously. Again, the same observation is valid for the issue of illegal immigration as illustrated by the below chi-square statistics. ILLIMDIC * GUARDIAN ILLIMDIC * DAILYMAI DRUGDIC * GUARDIAN ENVIRDIC * GUARDIAN Symmetric Measures Value Asymp. Std. Error(a) Approx. T(b) Approx. Sig. Interval by Interval Pearson's R .108 .058 1.997 .047(c) Ordinal by Ordinal Spearman Correlation .108 .058 1.997 .047(c) N of Valid Cases 342 a Not assuming the null hypothesis. b Using the asymptotic standard error assuming the null hypothesis. c Based on normal approximation. The Guardian’s coverage on enlargement also emphasized the good effects of enlargement on cooperation on environment. UNEMPDIC * TIMES The Times draw an optimistic picture of the issue of enlargement’s impact on unemployment. The Daily Mail, on the other hand, following its usual Euro-skeptic line, emphasized the possibility of a rise in unemployment after the enlargement. UNEMPLOYMENTDIC * DAILYMAIL WELFADIC * GUARDIAN WELFADIC * DAILYMAIL Finally, as expected, the Daily Mail emphasized the negative impacts of enlargement on British welfare system, while the Guardian covered the issue quite positively. 1 Ghanem 1997, p. 3-14; McCombs and Reynolds, 2002. Quoted in Hsiang and McCombs 2004, p.22. 2 Dalton and Duval; Carey and Burton, 2004. 3 Norris et al., 1999; Newton and Brynin, 2001, quoted in Carey and Burton 2004, p. 625. 4 Curtice 1999, p. 26-27. 5 Capella and Jamieson, 1997; Graber, 1988, 1993; Iyengar, 1987, 1991; Iyengar and Kinder, 1987; Neuman et al., 1992; Norris, 1995; Patterson, 1993. 6 Norris 2000, p. 206. 7 Anderson and Weymouth 1999, quoted in Carey and Burton (2004), p. 625. 8 McCombs and Kiousis, 2004. 9 Please refer to Annex I for the dates of fieldwork of EB surveys used in this analysis. 10 Under ideal conditions, this study would also examine the relationship between the media coverage and public opinion after the enlargement day. But the latest of a series of Eurobarometer surveys assessing public opinion on enlargement has been conducted on March 2004. Hence this limits the time frame of this study. 11 Two undergraduate students – Timothy Sheffield of the University of Manchester and Jack de Glanville of Umist University – conducted the coding. The author wants to thank them for their assistance. 12 Scott’s pi as a reliability index takes into account the extent of inter-coder agreement that results from chance. See Holsti, 1969, p. 140-141. 13 Regarding the analysis of major frames, Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) employ “economic consequences” frame, which they argue reports an event, problem, or issue in terms of the consequences it will have economically on an individual, group, institution, region, or country. Neuman et al. (1992) and Graber (1993), and Eichenberg and Dalton (1993) also identify it as a common frame in the news. To the economic consequences frame, this study adds the political and socio-cultural consequences of enlargement to investigate the extent to which these frames are mirrored in public support for enlargement. 14 Since content analysis examines census instead of a random sample, the differences that are found are real, which makes it unnecessary to run statistics that report significant differences or project to the population. Even so, the statistical tests are conducted. 15 Further exploration of the second-level analysis is attached at the end of this article in the Annexes section. 16 Wanta, 1997. 17 Dalton and Duval 1986, p. 119. ?? ?? ?? ?? 49