Euros, Crises and Bailouts: Topics the Media Covered in May

Now that it is evident from the numbers that the EU receives little media exposure relative to the total amount of media a person is exposed to daily, it’s time to look into the major subjects of these articles and delve even deeper into answering the question of overall media exposure in the U.S.

All subjects from each form of media were counted that had a LexisNexis relevancy score over 84, indicating that it is, in fact, a major reference. The LexisNexis indexing system was most effective in indexing newspapers, which had a total of 3,122 major subjects, within the articles. The indexing system was the least effective in indexing the blogs, resulting in only 514 major subject references, and was marginally better with television transcripts with a total of 270 major subjects. However, a large portion of these blogs and television transcripts were labeled “Unavailable” which indicated that there were no major subjects listed. The table below shows the subjects referenced the most across all three forms of media.

Major Subject	Frequency	Percent	Cumulative Percent
Euro	172	5.5	5.5
Economic Crisis	124	4	9.5
Public Finance	110	3.5	13
Euro Zone	107	3.4	16.4
Bailouts	104	3.3	19.8
Monetary Unions	102	3.3	23
Public Debt	99	3.2	26.2
Banking & Finance	98	3.1	29.3
International Economic Organizations	97	3.1	32.4
Bonds	96	3.1	35.5
Economic News	92	2.9	38.5
European Union Institutions	74	2.4	40.8
Government Bonds	56	1.8	42.6
Stock Indexes	52	1.7	44.3
Central Banks	51	1.6	45.9
Editorials & Opinions	46	1.5	47.4
Currencies	41	1.3	48.7
Budget	39	1.2	50

The table shows that half of the media had to do with a total of 18 subjects. Of these 18 subjects, only two do not have to do directly with economics, European Union Institutions and Editorials & Opinions. The reference to European Union Institutions is most indicative of a form of media that contained substantial information about the EU. So over the month of May only a total of 74 newspaper articles, blog entries and television programs, covered something substantial about the EU, a total of 2.4 percent of all the media gathered. 

This number is also most likely inflated because of the Greek government debt crisis that was occurring during this month, hence so many references to the Euro. The line graph below again shows the total number of media gathered over the month, but also shows the percentage of total times the Euro was referenced each day. 

We can see from this graph that almost half of all references of the Euro occurred on May 12th, after a peak in total media coverage, on May 10th. The peak in Euro mentions most likely has to do with the EU announcing a bailout plan for the Eurozone should governments default on their sovereign debt. What this shows again is that there is not substantial coverage of EU events. The focus of the media was not on the bailout plan itself and the implications it has, but rather, speculation on the demise of the Eurozone.

While my previous entry, which only looked at the total media counts, cast some doubt that the EU was receiving little media attention relative to other individual subjects, which is still hard to determine, the subject analysis definitely shows that substantial coverage is extremely small. Only 2.4 percent of the media could have contained substantial information about the EU’s institutions and happenings. This number was most likely inflated because of the crisis in Greece during that month. This raises other interesting questions regarding the nature of reporting on the EU. Was total media coverage inflated over this month because of the crisis? Is total media coverage much smaller during “non-crisis” months? And the most difficult question of all: how much exposure does the EU receive relative to other similar subjects, such as other state governments? These are questions I wish to further explore and eventually hope to answer.

Total media exposure of the EU in May 2010

The question I am interested in answering is how much exposure does the EU receive in the U.S.? Every day we are barraged with all sorts of media through newspapers, television, blogs and yet another medium with the explosion of microblog sites like Twitter. How much of this media directly relates to the EU?

There has been a significant amount of research on public opinion and media exposure of the EU within Europe itself. Research has been consistent in showing the "communication deficit" and lack of a public sphere in the EU, where citizens actively participate in the political process.  But unlike in Europe, there is no polling organization like Eurobarometer that continually monitors public opinion about the EU in the U.S.

Why is studying public opinion about the EU important? Because within a liberal democracy, public opinion should ultimately shape foreign policy and our relations with Europe, through the officials we elect.  There has been substantial research done on the relationship between public opinion, the media and foreign policy, and for that reason, along with difficulty of tackling such a complex question, this issue will left out of this investigation.

Because so much media exists, examining the aggregate amount of media an American is exposed to is a daunting question to answer. But with LexisNexis database, which catalogues all media not only in the U.S., but a substantial amount from the world, this question became much simpler to examine. Using the wealth of information collected by LexisNexis is how I will begin to see just how much media we are exposed to regarding the EU on a monthly basis.

All newspapers, television transcripts, and blogs were gathered for May. A search was done on LexisNexis using "European Union" as an organization to retrieve results. These results were also limited to media that was published in the U.S.  LexisNexis indexes media through identifiers such as organization, subject, geography, and people to name a few. A search can be conducted using any of these identifiers. For example, a search could have been conducted using geography and searching Europe. An organization search was chosen to retrieve media that directly deals with the European Union. The name of the publication, date, word count, and relevancy score were collected. The relevancy score is a percentage from 60-99 that LexisNexis assigns each piece of media. A score of 60-84 is considered a minor reference, while 85-99 is a major reference. All subjects that received a score of over 84 were also gathered. (For more information on the LexisNexis indexing system please see http://law.lexisnexis.com/infopro/Training-and-Resources/SmartIndexing-Resource-Center )

Using this data, we will look at the month of May in depth.  The line graph shows all of the totals for all forms of media over each day of the moth. The most extensive coverage came from U.S. newspapers with a total of 552 stories for an average of 18 stories a day. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times published the most articles and, combined, made up nearly half of all the newspapers, 43 percent.  The median word count, which is used because of significant outliers in the sample, came in at 558 words. Around the length of this blog post so far.  Is this a lot, a little? A major problem with this analysis is evaluating the EU's media exposure relative to other, single subjects.

 Outside of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and a choice few other newspapers, the EU most likely only makes a short appearance in the very small international news section of local newspapers.  This is because the top five newspapers contributed most articles with higher word counts, driving the average up. How little substantial coverage is, is best illustrated through the relevance score. Only 10 percent of the articles contained the EU as a major reference as determined by LexisNexis, indicating that most articles referenced the EU only in passing, with the bulk of the article pertaining to another organization, subject, person, or other identifier.

A total of 450 blogs were counted for May giving an average of 15 per day. Being that anyone can start a blog, and their recent explosion this number seems too low. LexisNexis trolls 4,539 different blogs through a source called Newstex. This is higher than the number of newspapers in the U.S., so total results should still be higher if the EU was receiving a proportional amount of coverage in the blogosphere as it was in newspapers. Unlike newspapers, the top three blogs made up only 15 percent of the 450. The median word count was 458, about 100 words shorter than newspapers and only 8 percent contained the EU as a major reference. These results indicate that the EU receives even less coverage in the blogosphere than it does through newspapers.

And how does the EU bode on television? Again this is hard to evaluate relative to other subjects. There were a total of 56 news broadcasts over the course of May that mentioned the EU. This however does seem low, and is also the conclusion in a similar study conducted on media exposure in 2004 by Lynda Kaid and Andrew Willliams entitled “Framing the New EU: U.S. Media Portrayals of the 2044 European Union Expansion and Parliamentary Elections,” because many of the sources, such as CNN, are active 24 hours a day. Word count could not be determined because of such high variance in the data for the transcripts. There was a slight increase, 14 percent, in major references of the EU compared to newspapers and blogs.
 

Ultimately these quantitative results can say that the EU receives a small amount of media exposure relative to the total amount of media we are exposed to each day. On a per subject relative basis this is harder to determine.  Does the EU receive more exposure than Russia? Brazil? Does the EU receive more exposure than Brangelina? Most likely not. The question now becomes a normative one: should the EU receive more media exposure than it currently does in the U.S.? I believe the answer is yes. The EU does not receive enough media exposure relative to its importance as a global actor.

More to come examining the subjects of the media gathered...

Why should we care about the EU?

Madeleine Albright once said "to understand Europe you have to be a genius--or French." My name is Jerry Wohlgemuth and this has become one of my favorite quotes over the past year as I pursued my Master of Arts in Political Science in Florence, Italy at James Madison University. Having focused on European Union policy and lived within the continent, I like to think I have a unique understanding of arguably the most complex system of governance on the planet. However, even having lived and studied there, my understanding is far from complete. This has led me to believe that Americans in general have a very thin understanding of our trans-Atlantic neighbors that many of us identify so strongly with, which has led to this blog. The purpose of this blog is to explore current events within the EU from an American perspective. My contribution will build on research I began while in Europe: examining media exposure of the EU in the U.S. with the hope of exploring overall public opinion in the U.S. towards the EU, and issues relating to economic policy. I also hope to make this an open forum for debate for other graduates of James Madison's European Union policy studies program and other Americans interested in European politics, who can both comment and contribute with their current/past research.

The first question that must be asked when examining the EU is why is it important for Americans to be informed about the EU? Some quick economic facts:

1. Combined, the 27 member states of the European Union have a population of over 500 million, a huge market for American business.

2. In 2009 the EU imported €286 billion in goods and services from the U.S. and we imported €323 billion from them.

3. The EU spent €121 billion in foreign direct investment in the U.S., while the U.S. invested €50 billion.

4. DG Competition, the EU's form of an anti-trust regulatory body can regulate many American businesses if they have a "community dimension." (Ask GE, Microsoft, or Boeing if the EU doesn't play an important role in market regulation. All were fined or subject to change conditions of their mergers)

Determining a community dimension -- Company does more than €5 billion in worldwide turnover, more than €250 million worth of sales within the European Union, or does more than 2/3 of its sales within one member state of the Union

5. The EU negotiates at the WTO as one. This means that if the U.S. runs into a trade dispute with Malta (population less than 500,000) it will have to negotiate with the EU rather than just the Maltese government.

These are only a few economic justifications why the U.S. public should keep up to date on EU current events. While this seems like enough reason for the EU to receive substantial media coverage, the EU is far from a consistent headliner.

Next to come, my findings on media exposure for May 2010...