Formal Charactersitics of European Union Media Coverage
Volume of Coverage
Newspapers and Television
Monthly Distribution
Newspapers
Television
Distribution by Outlet
Newspapers
Television
Sources
Newspapers
Television
Focus of Domesticity
The coders were asked to asses whether the news is presented from a national, EU or neutral (or 3rd country) perspective. Thus, to investigate the focus of domesticity of news a distinction was made between:
- "pure" EU news, or stories focused on the EU without any involvement of the country of the news outlet, e.g. a story on the EU constitution debate between the EU member states in Thai newspaper;
- "EU news at home", or domestic news items that are characterized by the inclusion of information on the EU, e.g., a story on the consequences of the EU enlargement on NZ // or a report of a diplomatic visit by a NZ politician to Brussels;
- "EU news abroad", or EU news within the context of the third party (neither EU nor the country of the news outlet), e.g., a story in Australian media outlet on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the EU is mentioned as a member of "negotiation quartet".
Focus of Reporting EU in Newspapers
Focus of Reporting EU in Television
Degree of Centrality
For each article containing reference to the EU, coders were asked to state whether the topic was the main focus of the news item, a secondary focus, or merely a minor reference.
Thus, to asses the degree of centrality of news a distinction was made between the:
- main perspective: e.g., a story that focuses solely on the event in the EU;
- secondary perspective: events in the EU which are described as equally important to other events in the story;
- minor perspective: the EU has been alluded to in passing as a minor reference in the report.
Centrality of EU in Newspapers
Centrality of EU in Television
Length of Articles
Average length of news items representing the EU, in number of words.
Newspapers
Since Korean and Thai languages use hieroglyphs, only news texts from English speaking newspapers in Thailand and Korea (The Bangkok Post, The Nation, and The Korea Times) were measured in number of words.
| Thailand | New Zealand | Korea | Australia | |
| EU as a Major Theme in EU Context | 375 | 467 | 1,589 | 775 |
| EU as a Major Theme in National Context | 475 | 372 | n/a | 536 |
Television
| Country | Average Length of EU Item |
| Thailand | <31 |
| Australia | 193 |
| New Zealand | 242 |
| Korea | 521 |
Placement of Articles
Newspapers
| Australia | New Zealand | Thailand | Korea | |
| Newspaper Section | Business/ Economy World News Opinion |
Business/ Economy | World/Foreign News | Business/ Economy |
Television
Owing to the differences in the nature of each country's television news bulletins, we are currently in the process of establishing a pattern by which the bulletins can all be divided into sections. These results are thus unavailable at present, but will be included as soon as they are processed.