Research
Religion, Euroscepticism, and the Media (REM)
Religion, religiosity, generally, value systems are rather neglected when explaining political attitudes, e.g. towards the European integration. Furthermore – after 9/11 - it seem highly intrusive that the media have increasingly covered political affairs under a religious frame and that the issue religion seems to have risen in salience. The interest of my study is to ascertain the type, kind, and intensity of religious references in the media and how they affect public opinion towards the EU.
The EU seen from outside
Whilst numereous studies exist that analyze the relation of (European) Brussels’ correspondents to the EU, no large scale quantitative study so far has analyzed the perception of journalists of the EU outside of Europe. In this study more than five hundred journalists from over 100 countries have beenasked. The results show that generally the EU and the European integration process are evaluated very positive by journalists worldwide. Only concerning one international problem (defeating terrrorism) the United States of America are seen as more likely to have a higher problem solving capacity than the EU. Furthermore, journalists contact intenstiy, personal values, perceptions of their role as a journalist, and cultural backgrounds show to have an impact on the journalists’ evaluations of the EU and the European integrations process.
Foreign news in times of globalization
At a time of intensifying social, economic, and cultural links between the different world regions, it is crucial that the publics know about developments worldwide so that their knowledge influences their political evaluations in order to solve international problems, such as global warming, poverty, Islamic/Western tensions, etc. reasonably. Three large scale studies exist, two from the UNESCO, one from the early eighties, one conducted in the early mid Nineties, and one fourthcoming in 2008 that analyze at a certain point of time, the impact of certain news values on foreign news coverage. These numbers have a number of shortcomings, acknowledged by their authours, especially their cross-sectional nature. Therefore, this study focussed on the development of the total foreign news coverage of three elite newspapers, The New York Times, The Times, and El Pais, that arguably in their home countries influence some of the most influential elites in the world. The results show that in the early eighties, The New York Times provided far more foreign news covage than the European newspapers. Since the midst Nineties the European newspapers provide far more foreign news coverage than the American newspapers. Thus, nowadays, the arguably most influential elite in theworld, TheNew York Times’ readers are -- at least quantitative-wise -- far less informed than the elites of England and Spain.