Willem Joris

The euro crisis in metaphors and frames: Focus on the press in the Low Countries

This study examines the frames used in reporting on the euro crisis. As far as the debt crisis is concerned, the media are the main source of information for European citizens. It is therefore interesting to carry out an in-depth content analysis of news coverage. The study looks into five dominant frames in Flemish (i.e. Dutch-speaking Belgium) and Dutch newspapers. War proved to be the most frequently used frame, followed by disease, natural disaster, construction and game. The prevalence of these frames was stable in both countries and from one type of newspaper to another.

Covering the European Union: from an intergovernmental towards a supranational perspective?

Abstract This article investigates the cross-national prevalence of five news frames in quality papers’ coverage of the Treaty of Lisbon (EU Constitution). Three frames were identified in earlier studies: economic consequences, conflict, and human interest. Two additional frames were identified and composed: power and nationalisation. During the seven-month period leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon (December 2007), we analysed 341 articles from four quality papers: Le Monde (France), De Volkskrant (The Netherlands), De Standaard (Dutch speaking community of Belgium), and Le Soir (French speaking community of Belgium). Our results show that although significant differences between newspapers were found in the amount of framing, overall they reflected a similar pattern in the adoption of the news frames. The economic consequences frame, followed by the power frame, appeared most prominently in all of the newspapers’ coverage. However, the conflict and nationalisation frames recurred in a significantly lesser degree. These findings indicate that the meaning behind the EU Constitution as a symbol of supranational unity could have led to a shift from a domesticated, conflict oriented coverage as found in previous studies to a more unified portrayal of the EU within and between the quality papers under study.

The news framing of the ‘Syria fighters’ in Flanders and the Netherlands: Victims or terrorists?:

In this article we present a cross-national comparison of framing of the issue of the ‘Syria fighters’ in Flanders and the Netherlands. We examine this topic using inductive and deductive framing analysis and interpret the results in terms of the advocates expressing the frames and the newspapers they were published in. We argue that variation in frame use can be explained by considering the background and social identification of the frame advocates. Furthermore, the subject of the ‘Syria fighters’ is depicted as mostly relating to (Islamic) religious motives and the overall societal construction is relatively one-sided and problematized in a negative sense. This article serves as a preliminary step to a multi-level analysis of societal discourse on integration-related issues in online and offline networks, with an emphasis on Moroccan minorities in Flanders and the Netherlands.

More news from the Euro front: How the press has been framing the Euro crisis in five EU countries

This article examines the metaphoric frames in the coverage of the Euro crisis in newspapers across five EU countries. Our quantitative frame analysis identified five dominant frames: war, construction, disease, natural disaster, and game. In all five countries, the Euro crisis as war turned out to be the most prominent news frame. Such framing uses martial, aggressive language to describe the European public sphere. This finding is not without importance, as newspapers play a key role in shaping the general public’s perception of the Euro crisis and by extension the European Union’s institutional elite and its (in)ability to cope with crisis.