The effect of the media on political discourse is well documented, and the issue of European integration is a prime example. Citizen perceptions of EU integration are shaped by its framing in the media and elite debates.
Now that media coverage is increasingly politicised and news coverage can tend towards a more cynical representation of politics, public perceptions of these issues can also become detached .
MEDIATIZED EU Project lead Dr Tanya Lokot cites the concept of ‘media democracy’ where the individual, media-savvy performance of politics becomes more important than the political process diluting meaningful democratic engagement.
As Ireland prepares to begin its EU presidency this month, the findings of the Horizon 2020-funded MEDIATIZED EU project are more relevant than ever. The project, which brought together researchers from seven institutions across Europe, investigated the role of political and media elites in shaping public sentiment towards the EU.
The researchers explored this issue through: reviewing existing literature, opinion poll data and policy documents; in-depth analysis of media coverage of the EU; representative surveys of the public; and hundreds of interviews with political and media elites.
They found that perceptions and representations of the European Union are shaped through an ongoing interaction between three forces. Firstly, political elites communicate their views of the EU, which are then framed by the media, and then reported to the public.
However, the resulting public opinion also shapes ongoing elite debates, creating a feedback loop that impacts present and future views of the EU. For instance, in Ireland the researchers found a dominant discourse describing relations with the EU as mutually beneficial and reflective of shared values.
This reflects the outcome of a recent poll commissioned by the European Movement Ireland which found support for Ireland’s membership of the EU remains strong at 82% in Ireland, unchanged from 2025, and is down 1% in Northern Ireland to 76%. While stable, this represents the lowest level of Irish support for EU membership since polling began in 2013, peaking in 2019 at 93%.
Alongside Ireland, the research examined this dynamic in a range of countries: some of the other ‘old’ EU Member States (Belgium, Spain, Portugal), as well as ‘newer’ EU Member States (Estonia, Hungary) and Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries like Georgia.
The team also conducted representative population surveys in each country to better understand how the public views the EU and what shapes its perceptions, and relayed the country case study results back to target audiences through a series of workshops.
The MEDIATIZED EU project’s key insights, reflected in academic and policy papers, showed that pro-European sentiment coexists with low public awareness of the EU. In some cases this could leave the door open for misinformation from both pro- and anti-EU actors.
Amid ongoing and overlapping crises – from Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine to democratic backsliding across the West – the European project is facing significant challenges.
The researchers stress an urgent need to improve 'EU literacy' so that a better-informed public and a free media can protect democracy and fundamental rights across Europe.
The full results of the project are available in an open access edited volume online.
The findings from the project are essential to understanding how these developments shape perceptions of Europeanisation. They offer evidence for policy responses to Eurosceptic attitudes, populist threats to EU values, autocratic media capture, and harmful anti-EU narratives. The team produced a short policy brief outlining key policy recommendations, with longer versions for EU policymakers and national policymakers.
Since its completion the project has been identified as a EU Research & Innovation Success Story by the European Commission.
MEDIATIZED EU research was funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program (GA no 101004534).
