This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Google Scholar Articles by Maier, J. Articles by Rittberger, B. Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Shifting Europe's Boundaries

Mass Media, Public Opinion and the Enlargement of the EU

Kaiserslautern University of Technology, Germany, maier{at}sowi.uni-kl.de

Berthold Rittberger

University of Mannheim, Germany, berthold.rittberger{at}uni-mannheim.de

This article demonstrates that public attitudes towards EU enlargement are strongly affected by exposure to the mass media. It reveals `priming' effects by showing that media exposure affects the standards by which individuals evaluate the accession of potential candidate countries. To gain a more refined understanding about media effects on enlargement attitudes, we analytically separate three different factors that underlie EU enlargement support for a given candidate country: its economic performance, its state of democracy and its perceived cultural `match' with the EU. Employing an experimental design, we probe the media-induced effects of these factors on EU enlargement attitudes.

Key Words: enlargement • experiment • mass media • public opinion

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?