The news coverage of the 2004 European elections in the new member states: The cases of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Paper presented at the Fifth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics.  Porto, Portugal, June 2010.

Abstract: This study examines the EU news coverage in the press and on television in the weeks leading to the 2004 European elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, shortly after they joined the EU. The study uses the European Election Study data, and most results follow previous research. The EU news coverage was generally low and focused on national rather than EU actors. It was more visible on television than in newspapers and more visible on public television and in broadsheets than on private television and in tabloids. On the contrary to previous findings, the EU news coverage was lower in the two new member states than in the whole EU. Polarized opinion about the EU among Czech political elites was expected to increase the EU news coverage there, yet the pro-European Slovakia has higher coverage. The findings are discussed in the light of the literature on EU news coverage.

The news coverage of the 2004 European elections (261KB PDF)