Putting Europe together: which Europe and what youth in the media today

The poster is a synthesis of the main results of the research on the EU news media landscape. It looked for similarities and differences in the coverage of European affairs across 7 different countries and 14 different national media outlets in 4 periods in 2014 and 2015. Three questions have been crucial: 1. Do national media show interest in European Affairs? 2. How and on which issues do they talk about European Union? 3. How and on which issues do they talk about European Union? Media coverage of European issues tends to be cyclical and to peak during events that national journalism sees as characterized by a specific European dimension. The debate on refugee and, more in general, the so- called “migration crisis” or “refugee crisis” is the most prevalent and spatially universal theme dominating the samples collected from 2015. Youth are only rarely mentioned in connection with European affairs, and their presence is associated only to a limited variety of issues, like education and unemployment. Thus even when rarely evoked as voters, they are considered “bad voters”, under the influence of extreme populism. Youth-oriented media such as the hybrid journalism of VICE (examined in six of its national-language websites), together with the television and radio programs selected by each national team, provide a very different picture of young people: (a) an unrecognized collective force, especially in relation to new technologies and innovation, entrepreneurship and start-ups; (b) growing disenfranchised from and disillusioned with mainstream politics but interested in other forms of participation (i.e. protest and dissent actions; volunteering); (c) generally interested in environmental and cultural issues and ac%ve within these realms, especially oriented towards music, cinema and arts; (d) a global (or rather glocal) community of workers, consumers and travelers that goes beyond the European borders.