Not Just a “Greek” Chorus: A Comparative Study of the Transnational Media Coverage of the 2015 Greek Financial Crisis

• In Event: Comparing Contexts: Diverse Methodological Approaches in Comparative Research

Abstract

Increased interest in issues of media globalization has often brought assumptions about how a more technologically enabled, globalized news environment will impact the development of a cooperative global public sphere. Overall, assumptions are that a more globalized news environment can beneficially promote a more deterritorialized socio-economic and political space where global policy problems can be addressed. Yet, when juxtaposed against our knowledge about the increasingly audience driven, financial motivations of the news industry and past research demonstrating audience desires for local or domesticated news, critical questions arise. Modernity has brought with it the possibility to share and debate with those with whom we never physically interact, across distance and time, yet we are still quite unsure about what type of information we are sharing.
The research here seeks to move the conversation concerning media globalization from the abstract to the more concrete — investigating whether transnational media are offering citizens the shared policy information and knowledge about those beyond their own domestic borders that would foster cooperative global policy making. For if we consider communication the “sharing of meaning through the exchange of information” (Castells, 2009) and increasingly are facing policy problems as a global community, then we must question what role(s) media play in the sharing of information in ways that foster the creation of the needed cooperative global public sphere.
Specifically, the study employs framing theory to analyze the newspaper coverage of the Greek financial crisis and ensuing international bailout in the summer of 2015 in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Germany. Specifically, the research comparatively examines how the Greeks and their leaders were portrayed (e.g. selfish or reasonable), how the problem was defined (e.g. as a national or international issue) and what solutions were highlighted, across nations, time periods and media outlets

Author

• Abigail Lynn Jones, Philadelphia U