ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION MASTER OF ARTS IN DIGITAL MEDIA, COMMUNICATION & JOURNALISM Pathway 2: European Journalism Master Dissertation Theme: “Why isn’t EU so catchy in its citizens’ eyes? Focusing on the EU news, through the Greek case” Panagiotis Bourchas Supervisor: Pr. Christos Frangonikolopoulos Thessaloniki, January 2021 Abstract EU news is hierarchically very low in the daily interest of EU’s millions of citizens, who care more about the news of their immediate concern, within their neighborhood, their city and their country, than the news of their ‘home’ called EU. In the present dissertation, we try to shed some light on EU’s newsworthiness, focusing on the Greek case, though most of the general, theoretical assumptions that emerge from the literature are almost perfectly applicable in all EU member states and in all respective – 27 national - ‘public opinions’. Referring briefly to several important topics of journalistic research, mass and political communication and sociology, e.g., public sphere, agenda setting, European integration and modern grass-roots reactions against politics, we get an obviously negative answer regarding the question of worthiness of EU news. Even media that do not have “what the audience likes” as the core of their journalistic function, acquiesce in the version that EU isn’t so catchy in its citizens’ eyes. Greeks might want to know more about the EU, according to our paper questionnaire answers, but ten media professionals argue why it is difficult for an average citizen to get more interested in the EU and finally to fall in love with it… Journalism could contribute to better knowing and understanding of the EU by its citizens and this is an issue at stake for our research. Key words: EU news, newsworthiness, agenda setting, public sphere 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Table of contents……………………………………………………………………... 2 1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 3 Objectives and research questions................................................................................... 5 Structure of the Dissertation……………………………………………………………... … 6 2. CHAPTER: What’s the matter? 2.1 Terms in relation with public interest …………………………………….. 8 2.2 Eurobarometer polls for Greece…………………………………………… 9 2.3 What people want from journalism………………………………............... 12 3. CHAPTER: The “failures of journalism vis-à-vis Europe” 3.1 The media coverage of the EU Institutions (Failures of representation)….. 15 3.1.1 Press corps of Brussels...……………………………………….... 17 3.1.2 The nationalization of ‘European journalism’…………………… 19 3.2 The agenda setting issue (Failures of production)………………………… 20 3.2.1 The agenda setting process………………………………………. 21 3.2.2 The ‘second-level agenda-setting’ function..……………………. 24 3.3 Some reasons for low visibility (Failures of participation)……………….. 26 3.3.1 The Public Sphere issue...………………………………………… 27 3.3.2 Definitions and basic concepts about EPS...…………………….. 28 3.3.3The “could be” European Public Sphere…………………………. 31 3.3.4 The digital transformations of Public Sphere…………................. 34 4. CHAPTER: The research 4.1 Interviews with journalists…………………………………………………. 37 4.1.1 Findings………………………………………………………….. 38 4.2 Survey……………………………………………………………………… 45 4.2.1 Findings of the poll………………………………………………. 47 5. CONCLUSIONS.......................................................................................................... 54 References…………………………………………………………………………….. 59 2 1. Introduction In a turbulent period for humanity, such as the one we are experiencing, belonging to a supranational organization, with the economic and many – theoretically - political possibilities provided by the EU, is like to be blessed by God... This is especially true for small countries with problems of corruption, deficient organization and democratic functioning, and with lack of a competitive and self-sufficient productive base. The value of this belongingness to the EU, however, does not seem to be appreciated much by its member states, nor by the larger ones - which is why Britain became the first country to leave the joint operation - but unfortunately neither by the smaller member states. European integration is a goal that must be approached from many different angles, either in terms of technical issues (e.g., pan-European political parties) or in terms of further economic and political homogeneity (debt mutualization, common foreign policy, etc.)1 or finally, in terms of better PR and communication. The last strand of issues is the one that this dissertation is basically concerned with, not in an attempt to answer to the so-called ‘democratic deficit problem’ of the EU but in a negotiation of the media’s position within the EU, which is crucial for the EU’s future (Frangonikopoulos 2017). The mass media, as it will become evident, do not appear to be taking the EU as an actor and as a political entity that plays a key role with its decisions in the lives of European citizens. On the contrary the EU is lagging behind the importance of the national governments and it is the media that sustains for the EU a series of myths and stereotypes, “Euromyth stories”, according to Meyer (1999:629) to make it remain icy, abstract and distant for the majority of European citizens, as the Eurobarometer polls prove every year (Oberhuber et al. 2005:258, Trenz 2008:295, Kaldor & Selchow 2013, Frangonikolopoulos and Poulakidakos 2017). The EU consequently does not evoke much interest on the part of most of the European public; it isn’t ‘catchy’, according to marketing terminology. We should also define the ‘political information environment’ in which we are going to move (Van Aelst et al. 2017:4) and the subject of this dissertation as the continuous process of supply and demand of political news and political information within a certain society, which is the 27 member-states of the EU. Nothing but politics in the EU concerns us in this research. 1 J.C. Juncker’s five scenarios for how the Union could evolve is such an agony, such as E. Macron’s Initiative for Europe 2016 and the so- called EU Global Strategy by F. Mogherini (Juncker 2017, Macron 2017, Mogherini 2016). 3 Our whole discussion takes place on a theoretical background that is applicable to all EU countries. However we keep always Greece in mind and although it is difficult to separate the part from the whole, i.e., one member state out of the 27, we try to adapt the theoretical ‘arsenal’ to the Greek case; with regard to the Research Questions (RQ) that will be put to the public and to ten professional editors and journalists of some major Greek media in the last chapter, we formulate the following two hypotheses (H) that are based on the considerations of our dissertation’s main topics mentioned above. Our first Hypothesis is actually the assumption that the European Union isn’t catchy. EU doesn’t possess the qualities of visibility and newsworthiness; thus, the extent to which the EU is featured in the news can rarely affect public opinion formation and act as the most important player in the political ‘ground’ of any country and in the present case, in Greece (Schuck et al. 2016:3). H1: The public in Greece doesn’t like the European Union, because EU isn’t glamorous and attractive to its citizens. Regardless of the acceptance of the EU among each country’s citizens on the scale of Europhile vs Eurosceptic - which is a key issue far beyond our interest - it seems unlikely that this pressing question and ‘chicken and egg’ deadlock can be answered: is the media coverage itself or the indifference of citizens for what is happening in the decision-making centers of Europe, more responsible for the reduced journalistic interest in the EU? – a dispassion that essentially shapes the agenda of the media, in the end. We adopt Trenz’s (2008:297-8) perspective who says that: …media cannot be expected to enhance democracy of a constitutionalized EU but rather to put systemic constraints on the widening and deepening of integration beyond the national. The empirical focus will be on the performance of political news journalism, which takes the leading part in this normative construction of the EU reality. Noteworthy, however, is the negative aspect that is usually rendered to citizens by actors such as politicians and journalists in order to justify people’s loathing of the EU. What you do not know well, you cannot love it. You can at best, fall in love with it for a while. So, it is easy, inevitably, for the other part to put the blame on the EU’s citizens, as the main factor of EU’s low impact on people’s lives and consequently, the public is charged that it doesn’t want to know more about the EU. The citizens’ alleged low interest in the EU and the weak demand for news adjusts the final supply of news by the Greek media, in our case: H2: Greek citizens are not interested in the EU and the media adapt to their choice. 4 Objectives and research questions Both parts Greek citizens and Greek media express their opinions on these hypotheses; with two specific methodological tools, we attempt to respond to the main issue, EU’s newsworthiness, by recording the views of citizens and some Greek media representatives. The public and the press confront slightly different issues; these Research Questions arise from the fundamental debate about EU’s newsworthiness and they are addressed respectively to ten professionals