Abstract
How do online news and social media use relate to public support for the European Union? To answer this question, this study compares the effect of institutional websites, news websites, online social networks, blogs, and video hosting websites on five important dimensions of public attitudes toward the EU: strengthening, performance, fear, efficacy, and utilitarianism. Cases were selected by choosing the samples from the largest country in each stage of EU enlargement: Germany, the United Kingdom, Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Romania. After controlling for demographic and political factors, results show that getting European news from blogs fosters negative attitudes toward the EU, whereas social network sites contribute to a positive view of the EU's performance and support for further strengthening. In addition, the use of YouTube and news websites interacts with off-line discussion to enhance political effects.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3199-3222 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | International Journal of Communication |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| State | Published - 2015 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 (Rachel R. Mourao, Joseph Yoo, Stephanie Geise, José Andrés Araiza, Danielle K. Kilgo, Victoria Y. Chen, & Thomas J. Johnson).
Keywords
- Blogs
- European Union
- Online news
- Public opinion
- Social media
