European(ised) media: journalists reporting on Europe in a European public sphere

Abstract

This thesis focuses on Dutch journalists working for written press on European affairs. The contribution of this thesis will be threefold: Firstly, it looks at the role-perceptions of journalists in a professional context that has altered dramatically due to the transformations of media and changes to European politics outlined above. Secondly, it does so by looking at specifically at journalists from the Netherlands - a core EU-member state that has been mostly overlooked in country analyses of the European public sphere (except for (Statham 2010b). Thirdly, this thesis will apply a wider multi-media approach to the profession of the journalism, by not only focussing on national newspapers, but by mapping the contemporary European media landscape and interviewing Dutch journalists working for a variety of European written press, both online and offline (ranging from EUobserver to Algemeen Dagblad. Considering all the above-mentioned developments with regards to European politics and the media landscape, it is worth shedding light on the linkage between Dutch journalists and a European public sphere. With ten semi-structured, qualitative interviews with exclusively Dutch speaking journalists, this thesis would provide the biggest contribution to thinking about the European public sphere in a Dutch context...