Finding Europe: mapping and explaining antecedents of ‘Europeanness’ in news about the 2009 European Parliamentary elections

Previous research has characterized European news coverage as mainly domestic in focus, hampering the emergence of a European public sphere. This study analyses the European nature of the news coverage of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. We not only describe the level of Europeanness in news coverage but also propose a comprehensive model to explain differences across countries. We employ a cross-national media content analysis (N=52,009) conducted in all 27 EU member states. Findings show that especially public TV channels and broadsheet newspapers are more European in coverage than their private and tabloid counterparts. Newspapers are also more European in focus in general compared to television. Furthermore, coverage is more European in countries with higher public EU support, the coverage gets more European during the campaign and is more European in countries that are geographically closer to Brussels, and in which no other elections take place at the same time.