Wednesday, June 26, 2013
A1.18D (Oudemanhuispoort)
Recent literature on the media coverage of Turkey’s bid to join the EU underlines the role of overall national standing on the EU affairs. According to Negrine et. al. (2008); domestic, political, cultural and historical considerations appear as important determinants of highlighting differences or similarities between Turkey and the EU as well as the advantages and disadvantages of a possible membership in this regard. To what extent, if any, are such national media attitudes stable? To what extent, if any, does such general tendency sustain in times of political, economic, and social fluctuations? To what extent, if any, have the economic and political instabilities within the last decade influenced such cross-national variations? In which cases can we speak about a convergence in the media of member states and in which cases does such divergence prevail? To what extent, if any, has the raising far-right throughout Europe influenced such different tones? In an attempt to answer these questions, the paper conducts a content analysis on the time periods representing selected critical junctures between 1999 and 2009 on two leading quality newspapers in five member states (UK, France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands). The paper is organized as follows: First, it reviews the literature on media coverage of Turkey's accession process. Second it analyzes the patterns of reporting on Turkey's accession process through content analysis of the news coded in NVivo for the five EU member states. It concludes by a discussion on the factors that determine variety of patterns of reporting.
