Research Papers

Enhancing the EU’s visibility as an actor on the global stage was one of the major aims of the Lisbon Treaty in the realm of European external action. The fuzzy international profile of the EU was to be sharpened vis-à-vis both the world and the inner-European, domestic audience. This paper suggests media presence as an indicator for visibility and explores public perceptions and constructions of EU foreign and security policy in selected print media. The endeavour draws on the assumption that studying the High Representative tells a lot about CFSP and ESDP/CSDP in general. Thus, the High Representative is used as a proxy for understanding the “brusselized” core of EU external action. News coverage on Javier Solana and Catherine Ashton is examined in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the “Big Three” of CFSP and CSDP, each of them having different approaches to EU foreign and security policy. The comparative media content analysis covers the period from 1999 to 2011 and investigates cross-national, cross-media and cross-time variations. Questions to be tackled are: How visible is the High Representative as a key actor of EU foreign and security policy? Is visibility increasing over time and particularly post-Lisbon? Which regions and subjects appear in the news and frame the reporting on the High Representative? Do media representations of EU foreign and security policy differ from official constructions? Are media attention and reporting convergent in the three member states? The paper aims to deepen knowledge not only about media representations of the High Representative, but also about public perceptions of and expectations towards EU foreign and security policy in general. As the study is exploratory in nature, it also reaches for establishing a research agenda for public and media perceptions of the EU in international affairs.