EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE REPORTS WP5.4.1 SELMECZI & SATA EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE STUDIES Work Package 5.4.1 Report, 2011 The Role of Print and Broadcast Media in the articulation of the European Public Sphere: Comparative qualitative analysis of selected Eurosphere media representative interviews Anna Selmeczi Robert Sata This paper can be downloaded without charge from: http://eurospheres.org/publications/workpackage-reports/ ISSN 1890-5986 EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE REPORTS WP5.4.1 SELMECZI & SATA EUROSPHERE ONLINE WORKING PAPER SERIES Title: WP5.4.1 – The Role of Print and Broadcast Media in the articulation of the European Public Sphere: Comparative qualitative analysis of selected Eurosphere media representative interviews Author: Anna Selmeczi Robert Sata This version: October 2011 Webpage: http://eurospheres.org/publications/workpackage-reports/ © EUROSPHERE, 2011 http://eurospheres.org © 2011 by authors All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including notice, is given to the source. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the EUROSPHERE Project. The statement of purpose for the EUROSPHERE Online Working Paper Series is available from the EUROSPHERE working papers website, http://eurospheres.org/publications/workpackage-reports/ Author Contact Information: Robert Sata Central European University, Hungary [email protected] ISSN 1890-5986 (online) EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE REPORTS WP5.4.1 SELMECZI & SATA Table of Contents 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................................1 2 Notions of diversity and regulating migration .........................................................................2 3 Conceptions of adaptation, citizenship, and EU-integration....................................................9 4 Views on the EU-polity and the European Public Sphere...................................................... 16 5 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................27 EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE REPORTS WP5.4.1 SELMECZI & SATA Comparative qualitative analysis of selected Eurosphere media representative interviews _______________________________________________________ Anna Selmeczi and Robert Sata1 1 Introduction Following the overall assessment of the in-depth interviews the national teams of Eurosphere conducted with journalists of major newspapers in each partner country, we set out in this paper to take a closer look at certain pertinent perspectives of the mass of qualitative data we have gathered. In this attempt to enquire into media representatives’ notions of diversity, attitudes towards EU centralization, citizenship, migration, EU enlargement and the European Public Sphere, we will aim to look into the possible correlations between the concepts central to the Eurosphere research project. In order to gain a more nuanced insight, we have selected for our analysis five countries and two of their main newspapers respectively, with one journalist representing each newspaper. 2 In choosing the newspapers to be included in our analysis, we did not consider tabloid media, but we aimed to diversify our selection sample according to the political–ideological characters of the papers. So as to have a diverse set of cases and consequently a more intriguing comparison, we have chosen two old (Germany, France) and a new member (Hungary), a non- member (Turkey), and a Euro-skeptic country (UK) to be the subject of our comparison. This selection seems relevant also due to displaying possible cultural differences, and due to including a major sending (Turkey) and three prime receiving countries (France, Germany, and the UK) in terms of migration – an aspect that, as we will see below, emerges prominently from the interviews under scrutiny. We cannot overemphasize that our goal was not so much to construct a sample that is representative of all the interviewed media representatives’ opinions, but to see whether EU- membership, the length of this membership, a member-state’s assumedly negative or positive attitude toward the EU, its affectedness by international migration, the difference in cultural- religious contexts within the different countries, or some other factor is reflected in the 1 Central European University, Hungary 2 In case of the UK our space for selection was limited as there were only two interviews conducted with print journalists coded into our database. 1 EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE REPORTS WP5.4.1 SELMECZI & SATA relationships between the central variables of our research project: attitudes to diversity, attitudes towards policy aspects of the EU, and last but not least, the European Public Sphere. To predict the findings discussed below, we will show that while it seems significant differences between opinions voiced by media representatives of the old and the new member states do not exist, journalists of EU member and non-member countries have very distinct concepts of migration or citizenship or, unsurprisingly, of the limits of EU-integration. In terms of the European Public Sphere, such trends are not so easily visible and the views of the selected journalists seem to reflect the average patterns of all the media interviews: most of them (five out of eight respondents) believe that there is no common European communication space. Consequently, it is somewhat difficult to grasp significant relationships between conceptions of this variable and those of diversity or aspects of the EU polity. What, on the other hand, clearly emerges from the selected interviews is the centrality of issues concerning migration and the fact that concepts of and attitudes towards migration seem to influence views on the openness of citizenship policy, explicitly or implicitly expressed notions about Europeanness, or the institutional level on which these issues should be regulated in the opinion of the media respondents. 2 Notions of diversity and regulating migration Based on an overall impression of our selected interviews, an interesting distribution seems to gain visibility: in terms of the most relevant issues in the context of diversity, old member states’ media responses consistently differ from those of the new member Hungary and non-member Turkey. Whereas the latter two tend to represent the ethnic (and, in the case of Turkey, religious) minorities as most relevant for a diverse society, journalists of old member states almost invariably emphasize the relevance of immigrant groups and issues related to immigration. This is so even if migrant groups were not always mentioned under the original question that inquired about the most relevant groups for defining a diverse society today. Furthermore, although one of the Hungarian respondents (the editor in chief of the major leftist-liberal Népszabadság ) said migrant groups and ethnic groups are the most relevant for diversity,3 in their entirety – in line with the general conclusions of the according chapters of the Hungarian country report – the interviews with Hungarian media representatives disclosed a much stronger focus on autochthonous minorities (with special emphasis on the Roma minority) and Hungarian minorities abroad, largely ignoring questions of immigration. Thus, the empirical fact according 3 According to the interviewer: „He understood ethno-national diversity first of all as a phenomenon related to immigration, and only after the interviewer’s repeated questions was he willing to address other dimensions” (NSZ, 04/08/2008). 2 EUROSPHERE COMPARATIVE REPORTS WP5.4.1 SELMECZI & SATA to which Hungary is not significantly affected by international migration neither as a sending nor as a receiving country, seems to be reaffirmed by the newspaper editors’ responses. Similarly, even though Turkey is indeed affected by international migration as a major sending country (this also features in the responses of its journalists and is discussed below), considering diversity, ethnic and religious minorities seem to determine the views on diversity of the Turkish respondents. As for which of these two is more pertinent, the two selected Turkish papers also differ, seemingly in accordance with their respective profile. That is, the representative of Zaman , the newspaper whose audience is more conservative and predominantly religious, emphasized the importance of religious groups, 4 while the editor of Cumhuriyet – a more secular paper – designates the majority of the population as the most relevant group, and warns of the predominance of a minority group as a risk inherent to diverse societies. 5 Contrary to the above presented views, views of media respondents of the other three selected countries clearly reflect the significant effect international migration has on their home states. French, German, and British respondents all emphasize the prominent relevance of immigration for notions of diversity, and most of them mention dynamics of immigrant persons’/groups’ integration as possibly or factually producing societal tensions within the host country. More or less visualizing this pattern, Table 1 summarizes the most important groups for societal diversity identified by the respondents of the different media outlets: 4 “Mehmet Kamis states that Zaman does not speak in behalf of anyone, but their reader profile is comprised of “conservative” people and people in whose life