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Commercially motivated junk news–i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards–constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013–2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Ihc on-going struggle over property rights in journalism in Europe, with a particular emphasis on the situation in Spain. To do so, we have carried out a historical review of the main conflicts on which the defence of intellectual property on the internet has centred. The European legislative system has tended to shy away from involvement in the area. The decisions and actions of the Member Slates have revealed a lack of common policy in the field of intellectual properly rights as a result of the facultative nature of EU Directives. State judicial bodies diverge in their regulation of the protection of the press regarding news aggregators. Intermediaries arc deemed parasites of the transformed value chain of the press industry by certain sectors. In the face of the tension which has surfaced between editors and news aggregators, diplomacy would appear to have become a key player as mediation takes place, with the intermediaries attempting to reach press collaboration agreements with the giants of the net The services and activities which feature in the digital environment outpace judicial orders and, consequently, out-of-court settlements appear to be preferred by some media. At the same lime, they await the Ell authorities' debate on the regulatory framework, which is expected to afford greater protection to press editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an open question why news media cover political campaigns the way they do. Framing elections in terms of conflict or strategy or focusing on horse-race framing and the role media and journalists themselves play in elections is commonplace, but this study investigates the factors that explain the variation in campaign news coverage. The context of our study is the 2009 European Parliamentary elections, and we use a cross-national media content analysis (N = 52,009) conducted in all 27 European Union member states. Findings show that time, country, and media characteristics all matter in explaining the way news media frame elections, however, to different extents and with different emphasis. Especially the variation in conflict framing is contingent upon the medium, the electoral system, and public aversion against the EU. We conclude with a discussion of our findings in the light of the ongoing debate on the role and impact of media framing during election campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the solidification of the discourse of integration of the Gypsy/Roma in the European press following the fall of Communism. A discourse analysis focuses on the British and Romanian press between 1990 and 2006, and it suggests that, in the midst of opening of EU borders and talks of a European Constitution, the idea and necessity of integration grew in political popularity as a means to peaceably alleviate interethnic conflict. However, the discourse of integration has continuously shifted between assimilationist voices and projects that attempt to change the Gypsy other into a non-Gypsy, on the one hand, and human rights-inspired defense and advocacy for the Roma, on the other. This article further suggests that the press does more than confirm stereotypes; instead, uncertainties, contradictions, and changes mark press writing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: A trend towards automation of scientific research has recently resulted in what has been termed "data-driven inquiry" in various disciplines, including physics and biology. The automation of many tasks has been identified as a possible future also for the humanities and the social sciences, particularly in those disciplines concerned with the analysis of text, due to the recent availability of millions of books and news articles in digital format. In the social sciences, the analysis of news media is done largely by hand and in a hypothesis-driven fashion: the scholar needs to formulate a very specific assumption about the patterns that might be in the data, and then set out to verify if they are present or not. Methodology/Principal Findings: In this study, we report what we think is the first large scale content-analysis of cross-linguistic text in the social sciences, by using various artificial intelligence techniques. We analyse 1.3 M news articles in 22 languages detecting a clear structure in the choice of stories covered by the various outlets. This is significantly affected by objective national, geographic, economic and cultural relations among outlets and countries, e.g., outlets from countries sharing strong economic ties are more likely to cover the same stories. We also show that the deviation from average content is significantly correlated with membership to the eurozone, as well as with the year of accession to the EU. Conclusions/Significance: While independently making a multitude of small editorial decisions, the leading media of the 27 EU countries, over a period of six months, shaped the contents of the EU mediasphere in a way that reflects its deep geographic, economic and cultural relations. Detecting these subtle signals in a statistically rigorous way would be out of the reach of traditional methods. This analysis demonstrates the power of the available methods for significant automation of media content analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the Dutch state secretary for European affairs lamented the narrow focus on the rules of European integration in the public debate, overshadowing the EU’s impact on citizens’ daily lives. This study compares the amount and type of news about the EU in the British, French and Dutch press during the period 1990—2003. A content analysis of Dutch EU coverage for the years 2004 up to 2006 was subsequently undertaken, which saw key events such as the EU enlargement and referenda on the constitution. The results show how Dutch EU news is notable for its domestic viewpoint until 2003. The prominence of EU news in all three countries seems unrelated to the EU’s growing authority. Besides key events regarding the integration process, the EU appears to rely on crises and rows to draw media attention. Everyday politics remain invisible. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims at assessing the theoretical and empirical role of the national press in the emerging European public sphere. The study draws on Europeanisation as the emerging framework for transnational communication across European nation states. It assumes that the press itself may perform as a political actor and make a substantial contribution to Europeanisation by advocating European integration and by broadening its scope to include the perspectives of all EU member states and the EU itself. In order to discern the influence or role of the media its "voice" this study analysed the content of editorials of 28 newspapers in seven European countries along two dimensions. First, the receptiveness of the press towards European perspectives is investigated by measuring the degree to which its editorials feature European scopes. Second, the study examines newspapers' attitudes about European integration as a political project. The overall findings point to a remarkable representation of European perspectives, and substantial support for EU integration, by the national press in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The newspapers in the Netherlands and Switzerland were somewhat more parochial, but still supportive. We also see that the United Kingdom (UK) media deviate substantially from these patterns. This study concludes that, in contrast with the findings of earlier studies, the press must be regarded as a significant agent of Europeanisation fostering transnational linkages of public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Commission's press and communication service plays a central role in the EU's dealings with news organizations. However, following the fall of the Santer Commission, even the service's own press officials admitted the organization was failing and constantly on the defensive against an increasingly hostile media. It was in this context that Santer's successor, former Commission president Romano Prodi, pledged radical reform, making the goal of a modern and professional' press service a priority. The Prodi Commission concluded that it needed a much more positive and proactive way of working. At a time when the Barroso Commission is proposing its own programme of change in communication policy, this article assesses the inheritance that the Prodi reforms left behind, with particular reference to their impact as seen by journalists from one of the member states in which traditionally it has been most difficult to communicate a positive image of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates why a specific European issue is debated in one country but disregarded in another, and why issues are debated differently in different European countries. To understand this national filtering, expectations are formulated as to how specific policy traditions and issue-specific conflict constellations within a country are reflected in media debates. A systematic content analysis of the debates on EU enlargement and a common constitution for the years 2000-2002 in the German and French quality press reveals considerable variation in issue salience, actors' prominence and actors' responsibility attributions between and within the countries. This variation can be seen to be connected with different policy traditions and conflict constellations. The study seeks to go beyond merely describing variations in media coverage across Europe and systematically uses cross-national and cross-issue comparative research to understand this variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the increased salience of corruption in East-Central Europe. It shows that press coverage of the issue is much greater than in the past and also greater than in other regions with comparable or higher levels of corruption. This finding is relevant because anticorruption rhetoric can have an important impact on political and economic developments, one that is partially independent of the actual levels of corruption. The study investigates several domestic and international factors that may have led to this development and finds that the role of intergovernmental organizations has been essential in bringing the issue to the forefront of public debates. Moreover, it shows that the European Union has recently been more effective in raising the salience of corruption in the region than other organizations. The article concludes with a discussion of the effect that EU membership may have on future anticorruption rhetoric and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, it has been argued that, despite the absence of European-wide mass media, a European public sphere is emerging, as some issues of European relevance become debated at the same time with the same intensity and with recourse to the structures of meaning throughout the entire European Union. This article examines the media framing of Silvio Berlusconi's controversial address as president of the European Council of Ministers to the European Parliament on 2 July 2003, in which he compared the Social Democrat MEP Martin Schulz to a kapò, an auxiliary concentration camp guard. The data are drawn from six EU countries, the US, Canada and Switzerland and show that while the reporting of the speech do satisfy two of Schlesinger's three criteria for the development of a European public sphere - the existence of a Europe-wide news agenda that is part of everyday media consumption of large audiences across nation-states - the data do not indicate a European transcendence of national public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article monitors news coverage on the European Union and EU-related matters in terms of news frames and news discourses adopted in online versions of seven quality newspapers (six European and one American) over a period of four months (December 2001-March 2002). During this period the EU Council Summit was held in Laeken, Belgium, on 14 and 15 December 2001. The selection of the national quality press outlets is carried out on the basis of a general, significant readership and centrality to the current media debate on European issues in the country. The seven countries are interesting cases in terms of their varying role in the history of European integration as well as their current attitude towards the EU. The research literature identifies five recurrent news frames (conflict, human interest, economic consequences, morality and responsibility): this article assesses the relative visibility of each of these news frames in the coverage on the EU and its institutions in the news outlets under study. Furthermore, it asks which discourse is more dominant when it comes to the shaping of European identity as portrayed in the news reporting. Four types of discourse (culture, expansion, in- and exclusion and power) are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the future of the journalistic profession in Europe. The author reflects on issues that promote the importance of journalism in Europe, including the right to the freedom of the press, the freedom of circulation and of the employment of workers that are members of the European Union. The converging phenomenons that constitute advances in the modes of information and communication, including the development of new technologies, patent deregulation and the overthrowing of the antiquated theory of informative sovereignty by national governments are discussed. The exercise of the future journalistic profession in the European community requires both professional and technical training, contends the author.

The article looks at the challenges facing small European health systems. Topics covered include the focus of the project SMSHealth.eu on the value of European integration for small health systems, the need for health ministers from European Union (EU) countries to continue discussing public health issues of concern to European citizens, and the importance of bringing people together to discuss topics of mutual interest in driving innovation through cooperation.