219. Name: Heidi Erbsen Title: Media Representations of European Union’s International ‘Actorness’ by EU ‘Outsiders’: Case Study of RT (English), BBC World, CNN International, and Al Jazeera Institution: University of Tartu Country: Estonia Date: 2017 Language: English Abstract: This study investigates the online content of four international news outlets (CNN International, BBC World, RT English, and Al Jazeera English) to understand how the EU as an institution is represented in comparison with ‘EU Member States’ or ‘Europe’. The two-step content analysis of the headlines related to the EU shows how the EU is present as an international actor, which issues are raised in reporting the EU, and how positively or negatively the EU is depicted. This study aims to identify how these different discourses work to construct the organization. The content analysis revealed that there are similar models of EU’s representation in international news. In the reporting of all four outlets, the EU was, to a greater or lesser extent: ‘a non-existent or secondary actor’ to specific regions, countries, or individuals, a ‘(un)reliable partner or actor’ in international agreements or problem solving, and a ‘bureaucratic/complicated/misunderstood organization’ in terms of function. The representations of the EU in each of these outlets reveals that the relative ‘outsiderness’ of a country does in fact influence how the EU is represented in international news reporting.
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