Shifting Europe's Boundaries: mass media, public opinion and the enlargement of the EU

Abstract

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.