Social Media, Euroscepticism, & the European Public Sphere · 2019. 5. 27. · 5/24/2019 1...

5/24/2019 1

@MichaelBossetta

Centre for European Politics Department of Political Science University of Copenhagen

Social Media, Euroscepticism, & the European Public Sphere

@MichaelBossetta

The School of Athens (Raphael)

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“Causarum Cognitio” The Knowledge of Causes


“Reactonim Cognitio” The Knowledge of Reactions


How to not to do Science

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Far-right

Dissatisfaction

Conversation

Categorize

Populist

Eurosceptic

Public Sphere

Reaction Cause!

Populism

Euroscepticism

Public Sphere

@MichaelBossetta

There’s deeper causes – don’t simplify!

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Cause!

Populism

Euroscepticism

Public Sphere

Far-right

Dissatisfaction

Conversation

Reaction

Rising Inequality

Sensationalist Media

Economic Globalization

Increased Immigration

Technological Change

@MichaelBossetta

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Euroscepticism Public Sphere

Empirics?

Populism

@MichaelBossetta

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EUROSCEPTICISM

@MichaelBossetta

Theory

“Hard” versus ”Soft” Euroscepticism

(Taggert, 1998)

“The category of soft Euroscepticism remains extremely broad and arguably still includes parties that

are in essence pro-European integration”

(Szczerbiak & Taggert, 2017)


Categorizing EU Evaluations Online


Applied to EP2009 Online Discussions

• Statements evaluating the EU in:

• National journalist websites and blogs

• Transnational social media: • Twitter threads with EU-related #’s

• Facebook pages/groups for the EP election


Results

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Soft

Hard

@MichaelBossetta

Results (De Wilde, Michailidou, & Trenz, 2014)

• Minority of online contributions about the EU polity are ‘complete’ arguments • Under-specified critique of the EU

• Therefore cannot be deliberative

• Elite-Citizen divide • Elites = Pro-European + Arguments

• Citizens = Diffuse Eurosceptic (Democratic Deficit)


What about the mainstream media?

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(De Vreese & Azrout, 2019)

@MichaelBossetta

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EUROPEAN PUBLIC SPHERE

SPOILER:

DOESN’T EXIST

@MichaelBossetta

Social Media!


There’s no infrastructure to keep others out!


Active Twitter users by country Source: Statista, 2019

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Anglo-Saxon Bias

Eurosceptic Bias

Most Active

@MichaelBossetta

Europeanization (Policy)


Europeanization of Public Spheres (Risse, 2014)

1) European and EU issues, policies, and actors are visible in national debates

2) Fellow Europeans are present as speakers and audiences

3) Common European themes are addressed using similar frames of reference


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Does Contestation Drive Europeanization?

@MichaelBossetta

Research Questions

• To what extent are national media discourses about Euroscepticism Europeanized?

• What factors explain the presence of a Europeanized discourse about Euroscepticism?

We were not interested in studying Euroscepticism, but testing if national media

reporting on Euroscepticism indicates Europeanization

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Spoiler: it does!

@MichaelBossetta

Data

• 6 Countries’ Mainstream Media • UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden

• Different Media Systems

• Political success of Eurosceptic Party in EP Election

• Economic Relation to EU Budget

• Mainstream media articles from 2014

• 2 quality press, 2 tabloids per country

• All print media articles containing ‘Eurosceptic’ or ‘Euroscepticism’ (in respective languages)


Number of articles per country (N=1,545)

129

26

207

467

275

440

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

UK IE FR ES SE DK

Articles per Newspaper


LDA Topic Modelling

Results: Scope of LDA topics

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

National European

UK IE FR ES SE DK

What Explains European Versus National Coverage?

• H1 (Media): The broadsheets’ Eurosceptic discourse

will be more European • Yes – 3.7 times more likely

• H2 (Politics): The less successful the Eurosceptic party, the more European the scope of the discourse • Yes – 1.5 times more likely

• H3 (Economic): Newspapers from net receiver countries will have more European discourse • Yes – 2.9 times more likely


Findings

1. The discourse around Euroscepticism is Europeanized

2. The media drive this process

3. The Europeanization of Eurosceptic discourse is explained by macro-level structural conditions:

1. Type of Newspaper (media)

2. Degree of Eurosceptic Party Success (political)

3. Net Contributor or Receiver of EU Funds (economic)


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Euroscepticism Europeanization

Media Type

Political System

EU Budget

+1

@MichaelBossetta

But…what about social media?

• Major problems delimiting national public spheres on social media

• Facebook data now heavily restricted

• Twitter highly elite, and not necessarily a good representation for national “public” spheres • (But we’re on the 2019 EP #’s)

• Mainstream media still set the agenda on social media


@SMandPPodcast

Social Media, Euroscepticism, & the European Public Sphere · 2019. 5. 27. · 5/24/2019 1...

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