1. / Home
  2. / Publications
Working paper

You’ll never talk alone: what media narratives on European reforms reveal about a polity in the making

In this paper, we have analysed the coverage of reforms in a European context in the leading business newspapers in the three biggest EU member states

Publishing date
06 December 2022
Authors
Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol Henrik Müller Giuseppe Porcaro Tobias Schmidt
Download
WP 19

This paper analyses the discourse since 2001 in three leading national business newspapers about reforms in the European Union: Handelsblatt (Germany), Il Sole (Italy) and Les Echos (France). We collected and organised a large dataset of articles published in these three newspapers. We used topic modelling to identify latent topics across articles. Based on this database, we then addressed four research questions and found: a relative degree of synchronisation of reform debates across the three countries; comparable reporting patterns, especially around the main crises; a greater degree of direction of the debate towards European issues over national issues in Germany than in France and Italy; and the tentative emergence of a shared narrative about crises. Finally, we highlight that bringing conflict and contestation back into European discussions may help stimulate wider interest in European matters.

The authors thank Rebecca Christie, Maria Demertzis, John Erik Fossum, Scott Marcus and André Sapir for their comments.

This working paper is an output from the EU3D project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 822419.

EU

About the authors

  • Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol

    Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol is a Non-resident Fellow at Bruegel. He specialises in international economic history, particularly the history of European economic cooperation and integration.

    He covers the European Union’s Economic and Monetary Union; the development of international and European banking regulation and supervision, especially the origins of the European banking union; European Public Goods; the rise of both global and European economic governance; the international debt crises of the 1980s, particularly in Eastern Europe; and the history of capitalism, neoliberalism and their relationship with European integration. 

    He speaks English, Italian and German.

    He is also a Professor of History of European Cooperation and Integration at the European University Institute (EUI, Florence), and Co-Director of the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre. Previously, he was a Bruegel Visiting Fellow, a Professor at the University of Glasgow and has held visiting and research positions at institutions including the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Keio University and Columbia University. He holds a PhD in History and Civilisation from EUI, Florence.

  • Henrik Müller

    Henrik Müller is a professor of economic policy journalism at the Institute of Journalism at TU Dortmund University, Germany. He studied economics at Kiel University and holds a doctorate degree in economics from the University of the Armed Forces Hamburg. Following a career in journalism, his last position being deputy editor-in-chief at manager magazin, the leading German business monthly, he joined  TU's faculty in 2013 to start a new program in economic policy journalism (bachelor and master) and the Dortmund Center for data-based Media Analysis (DoCMA) in cooperation with colleagues from the departments for data science and statistics.

    Henrik is the author of numerous books on economic policy and a frequent commentator on current issues in the media. A new book on the rise of nationalism around the globe and its consequences is due to be published in Febuary 2017. Recent papers include "Fighting Europe's Crisis with innovative Media: a modest Proposal" (Journal of Business and Economics, forthcoming) and "De-globalisation, Populism and Media Competition: the Spiral of Noise" (Central Eastern European Journal of Communication, forthcoming).

  • Giuseppe Porcaro

    Giuseppe Porcaro led the outreach activities of Bruegel, including communications, media, events, publications and hosted the Bruegel podcast series until October 2023. He was responsible for membership relations, supported the governance of the organisation, and was the board secretary. He also lead the Human Resources department and was part of the organisation's senior management. 

    Giuseppe's research interests lie with issues related to technological changes and how they affect policymaking and democracy, as well as to narratives about European futures and their policy implications in the current global geopolitical context.

    Giuseppe joined Bruegel in 2014, and was the head of communications and events until 2019. He has been Secretary-General of the European Youth Forum between 2009 and 2014, UN and Global Affairs coordinator at the Youth Forum from 2007 to 2009, and previously worked at the World Bank in Kosovo and Paris as well as the European Office of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement. Giuseppe holds a Ph.D. in Geography of Development at the University of Naples "L'Orientale". He is also a science-fiction writer, and author of a novel about Europe and the future of democracy.

    He is fluent in English, Italian, French, and Spanish.

     
     
     
     
     
     

  • Tobias Schmidt

Keyword
media
Language
English

Related content