The role of the media on party-based Euroscepticism

Abstract

This dissertation concentrates on the role of the media particularly newspaper articles and party-based Euroscepticism. It looks to assess newspaper articles and perceive political parties' standpoint on the EU. Since there are various forms of Euroscepticism, this dissertation focuses particularly on two different typologies of Euroscepticism. The first typology of Euroscepticism discussed is proposed by Taggart and Szczerbiak, which distinguished between soft and hard Euroscepticism. On the other hand, Kopecky and Mudde who proposed the second typology of Euroscepticism that is discussed in dissertation, distinguished between four different types of party-based Euroscepticism. The research design of this dissertation is a comparative analysis of two case studies. The two case studies used in this dissertation are Malta and the UK. Newspaper articles covering the 2014 EP election are selected and classified into different categories for each country, based on whether the content of the article is in support of the EU or in opposition of the EU. Moreover, the dissertation also evaluates the manifestos for the 2014 EP election for each political party to assess party-based Euroscepticism. The political parties assessed in this dissertation include the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party in Malta. Whilst for the UK the political parties include the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Labour Party and the United Kingdom Independence Party. Based on the newspaper articles and the manifestos, these political parties are classified into the two typologies of euroscepticism discussed in the Literature Review. The result of this dissertation shows that there are different levels of Euroscepticism in the EU member states. Meanwhile, from the assessment of newspaper articles in Malta and the UK, it is apparent that media coverage has an influencing role. In fact, the classification of the newspaper articles show that the UK is much more Eurosceptic than Malta