Shifting Europe’s Boundaries: Mass Media, Public Opinion and the Enlargement of the EU

Abstract: This article demonstrates that public attitudes towards EU enlargement are strongly affected by exposure to the mass media. It reveals `priming' effects by showing that media exposure affects the standards by which individuals evaluate the accession of potential candidate countries. To gain a more refined understanding about media effects on enlargement attitudes, we analytically separate three different factors that underlie EU enlargement support for a given candidate country: its economic performance, its state of democracy and its perceived cultural `match' with the EU. Employing an experimental design, we probe the media-induced effects of these factors on EU enlargement attitudes.