Paper Titles & Abstracts

The UK is renowned for having the most Eurosceptic media among the EU member states, in particular with regard to its tabloid press. Newspapers such as the Murdoch owned Sun and the now defunct News of the World, as well The Daily Mail, have, noticeably since the Maastricht Treaty, been renowned for portraying the EU in overtly negative terms and as against the British national interest. This lack of a 'level playing-field' in terms of EU coverage amongst the British press has left the UK open to accusations that its citizens are unable to weigh up the 'costs' and 'benefits' of membership of the Union in a rational and informed fashion. By drawing on content analysis of the front-pages of the Richard Desmond owned Daily Express' in 2011 and 2012, the paper argues that in recent years this situation has become further 'lop-sided' as a consequence of the newspaper's persistent 'Britain out of Europe' campaign which was the driving force behind the successful campaign to force a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons on the possibility of an 'in-out' referendum in October 2011, having obtained more than 100,000 on-line signatures in support. While not directly becoming embroiled in the 'age-old' sociological debate about whether the media influences or follows public opinion, the paper concludes that we have reached a 'tipping point' in terms of UK media coverage of the EU, which re-enforced by the growing influence of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Eurosceptic wing of the British Conservative party implies that an 'in-out' referendum on EU membership is likely to prove insatiable following the 2014 European elections and the next UK general election.