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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping in the
European media
Linking agenda setting, agenda building, and
agenda indexing

Sofiya Tarasevich, Liudmila Khalitova, Phillip Arceneaux,

Barbara Myslik, and Spiro Kiousis
University of Florida

This study explores relationships between agenda building, agenda indexing

(reflected through share of voice as the key variable), and agenda-setting
effects, measured through the combination of public opinion survey data
and quantitative content analysis. It conceptually distinguishes between the
three metrics often used interchangeably in the professional discourse by
advertising and media practitioners – share of voice, share of influence, and
share of conversation – and explores how they could be applied in political
communication research to become useful tools for agenda-setting
researchers. The results of the study indicate that an increased level of
nationalism serves as a significant predictor for EU policy support through
the pathway of decreased pro-EU sentiment, which, on the agenda level, is
reflective of pro-nationals being less supportive of the EU policies and the
idea of European integration.

Keywords: agenda setting, agenda indexing, gatekeeping, nationalism, share

of voice, share of influence, share of conversation

The European Union (EU) is a supranational institution in which its members

agreed to partially give up their sovereignty with regard to certain policy areas,
such as trade, customs, agriculture, currency, migration, and harmonized their
regulations on some political and economic issues. In recent years, the EU has
faced a number of unprecedented challenges, such as the refugee crisis, Brexit, the
Greek debt crisis, and terrorism, accompanied by a rise in right-wing nationalism,
populism and Euroscepticism.

https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.18014.tar
The Agenda Setting Journal 3:1 (2019), pp. 23–42. issn 2452-0063 | e‑issn 2452-0071
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
24 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

Mass media content, being both a cause and a product of the existing atti-
tudes, beliefs, and ideologies (McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996)
plays a crucial role in the process of European (dis)integration. The range of issues
the media pass on to the public agenda (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), the way they
frame those issues (McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, & Rey, 1997), and the way
they link them to one another (Guo, Vu, & McCombs, 2012) all shape public
opinion and policy decisions in individual nation-states. However, news produc-
tion is a complex and dynamic process which does not occur in a social vacuum.
Pre-existing social norms, ideologies, values, demands of audiences and sponsors,
availability of information sources, editorial policies, media routines, journalists’
personal beliefs, socialization, and attitudes all interact simultaneously and find a
reflection in individual news stories (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996).
The issue of content sourcing in mass communication is of particular interest
for strategic communication researchers due to its immediate impact on mass
media content, and, by extension, on public opinion. Public relations practitioners
often compete for media attention of their organizations because they know that
“being in the news” helps to create public awareness about their organization,
about its standing on various issues, and to advance its cause. Until recently, the
mass media have been almost the only bridge that linked organizations and their
audiences, yet despite the increasing use of social media, media relations remain
one of the most important functions of public relations (Strömbäck & Esser, 2017).
Competing for media attention, PR practitioners have developed various for-
mats of providing information to journalists that make the information gathering
process easier, more convenient, and cheaper through press releases, statements,
fact sheets, press conferences, reports, tweets, comments, interviews, and more.
Collectively, they are referred to as information subsidies in the literature (Gandy,
1982). Research points out correlations among the content of information subsi-
dies and mass media content in regard to various issues and in various settings
(Kim, Kiousis, & Xiang, 2015; Kim, Xiang, & Kiousis, 2011; Kiousis & Strömbäck,
2010), thus demonstrating how sources can shape what the media have to say to
their publics. However, the process of source selection itself is also influenced by
various systematic and random forces. Even a trivial thing such as who picks up
the phone when a reporter calls for a comment has an impact on what eventually
will be published. As for the more systematic influences, Cobb and Elder (1971)
point out unequal power relations among the individuals, groups, and organiza-
tions competing for public attention, and find that not everybody has equal access
to the media. They suggest that the legitimacy of the group, status, and commu-
nity standing of its individual members play a crucial role in the group’s ability to
get media attention. In addition, Cobb and Elder (1971) point out that the legiti-
macy of the issue itself can be constrained by cultural and political factors.

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 25

The crisis that the EU faces in certain countries today is that of legitimacy.
Functions of EU institutions and their policies are often at odds with that of
national governments, whereas European voters generally accord greater legit-
imacy to the latter (Federal Trust, 2010). These problems, exacerbated by the
ongoing refugee crisis and security issues, resulted in declining public trust in
integrative institutions and the rise of right-wing populism in the EU (Ding &
Hlavac, 2017).
The study seeks to examine whether the rising nationalism in the EU coun-
tries hinders the ability of EU institutions to promote their agenda through
national media outlets to public opinion. While agenda-setting theory explains
the transfer of agendas from the news media to the public (McCombs et al.,
1997; McCombs & Shaw, 1972), and agenda-building theory illuminates the role of
information subsidies in shaping the media agenda (Cobb & Elder, 1971; Gandy,
1982; Tedesco, 2011), the agenda-indexing hypothesis (Bennett, 1990) and the gate-
keeping theory (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996) shed light on why information subsi-
dies coming from certain sources have a greater chance to be used by the journal-
ists. Despite clear conceptual linkages between agenda setting, agenda building,
and agenda indexing, the literature largely neglects to examine the role of power
differentials in the agenda-building, and subsequently, agenda-setting processes
within a single analysis. The present study seeks to fill in this gap by introducing
nationalism as a variable influencing public perception of national power institu-
tions’ legitimacy vis-à-vis integrative governing institutions representing the EU.

Literature review

Gatekeeping theory: News production as a social process

This study aims to detect and define possible theoretical and empirical linkages
between agenda setting, agenda building, and agenda indexing. Gatekeeping the-
ory (Lewin, 1947) serves as a theoretical bridge that explains connectivity between
the three, as it examines the structure of factors that influence the media agenda
and the sources that receive an opportunity to express their point of view in the
media, and, thus, to gain a chance to set their agenda. Applied to news content
production, the theory describes it as a social process and identifies a number of
influences on the final product that reaches the audience.
These influences can be organized into a hierarchical model described by
Shoemaker and Reese (1996). At the first level of this model, researchers iden-
tify the personal background of a given reporter including professional and
political attitudes, beliefs, education, gender, and so on. Media routines, or the

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26 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

way journalists are trained to do their job in colleges and at work, for example,
and news gathering strategies, represent the next level of the hierarchy. Media
organizations and their written and unwritten rules, policies, standards, and
procedures specific to a particular newsroom/format of media is the third-level
force that has an impact on the media content. Social institutions and social
forces in general are at the next level of influences on mass media content,
and include, for example, advertisers, news sources, and audiences. Finally, at
the top level are larger structural forces such as dominant social, cultural, and
ideological norms of those in power in society. As key parts of the economic
system that is controlled by the ruling elites, the media tend to carry the broad
ideology consistent with the elites’ interests,thus ensuring the status quo.
These systematic influences often go unrecognized by individual reporters
who simply do their job. However, they simultaneously impact various stages
of news production. These influences find their reflection in what gets covered
(issues), how it gets covered (frames, tonality, visual content), sources used, what
gets and does not get quoted, which words are selected to describe something or
somebody, and where and when a story is placed (McCombs, Holbert, Kiousis, &
Wanta, 2011).

Agenda indexing: Source selection as a political process

Going beyond agenda-building effects of information subsidies on mass media

content, another reasonable question arises: Why are some organizations and
individuals more likely to be cited in the media than others? The agenda indexing
hypothesis takes into account unequal power relations within a society, and sug-
gests that mass media professionals, from the boardroom to the beat, tend to
‘index’ the range of voices and viewpoints presented in the news in accordance
with the existing power structure (Bennett, 1990). For instance, the president of
the United States is more likely to serve as an information source than any given
government official or government department; any given government depart-
ment is more likely to be used as a source than an activist group; and any activist
group is more likely to serve as a mass media source than any ordinary citizen. A
number of explanations for this phenomenon have been offered, and all of them
are related to the gatekeeping theory described above.
For example, journalists are trained to treat ‘official’ sources as inherently
more credible (Soloski, 1989). In addition, the process of newsgathering is more
efficient and less time-consuming when a person or an organization has a desig-
nated spokesperson or even a public relations department with a team of
employees whose job it is to respond to media inquiries and prepare ready-to-use
information subsidies for journalists. However, not every person and not every

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 27

organization has enough resources at their disposal to afford it. Likewise, agenda
indexing can be explained by the social perceptions of legitimacy of the actors;
after all, those endowed by the greatest power, particularly in politics, are assumed
to be supported by the greatest number of people and, therefore, represent the
majority. As such, there may be nothing wrong from the normative standpoint,
with journalists’ tendency to index the voices that reach the wider public (Bennett,
1990). While testing the possible explanations for the agenda-indexing effects is a
subject of a separate study, the authors believe that it is likely a complex mix of
individual, organizational, and societal factors that accounts for it.

The European Commission as an agenda sponsor for the national media of

the EU member-states

The European Commission (EC) is one of the key EU institutional bodies with
a substantial scope. It proposes legislation for the consideration of the European
Parliament (EP) and enforces the adopted policies. It also manages and allocates
EU funding and represents the Union internationally in the areas of trade policies,
humanitarian aid, and other international agreements (European Commission,
2016). The Commission’s activities, along with the decisions of the European
Council, receive the most media attention among the EU bodies (Morgan, 2005).
Recently, the EU faced a number of unprecedented social and economic
issues, such as the refugee crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the referendum for inde-
pendence of Catalonia, and terrorism which altogether challenged the perception
of legitimacy of its institutions and its territorial integrity. The political and social
dynamics within its member-states have reflected this crisis amid the rise of right-
wing nationalism, followed by the electoral success of the far-right parties in a
number of EU countries (“Europe’s Rising Far Right,” 2016; “Nationalist Surge
Challenges Europe,” 2016), populist rhetoric of the elected officials, Brexit, and the
possibility of ‘Frexit,’ ‘Nexit,’ and other ‘exits’ (Lyons, 2016).
On the one hand, the mass media could potentially help EU bodies and insti-
tutions to promote their cause and mitigate the consequences of the crises. How-
ever, the formation of the pan-European public sphere in the mass media, which
could presumably aid the formation of European identities, faces substantial diffi-
culties because political life in Europe is determined largely by the decisions made
on the national level. Citizens look for and receive information about European
events, policy issues, and debates overwhelmingly from national media, where
they are discussed – when they are discussed at all – mostly in the context of
domestic affairs (Hegedûs, 2011).
Content-analysis studies have convincingly demonstrated a national bias in
reporting about the EU in all member-states; moreover, domestic politicians often

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28 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

“create a scapegoat from the EU – or ‘Brussels’ – compensating their own failures,

or, actually, necessary compromises on European level” (Hegedûs, 2011 p. 112;
Nienstedt, Kepplinger, & Quiring, 2015). The attempts to establish pan-European
media outlets largely fail due to language barriers, cultural differences in reporting
styles, nation-focused advertising markets, EU institutions’ communication
deficit, and wider audiences’ lack of interest in the institutional agenda (Varga,
2011). Such factors result in predominantly nation-focused mass media content
within the EU, which supposedly, reinforces existing national identities rather
than promote European integration (Mancini & Mazzoni, 2015).
The indexing hypothesis suggests that the media ‘index’ political voices rep-
resented in the news by allocating space to different political actors in accordance
with the actors’ power within a social structure. Indeed, Rooduijn (2014) has dis-
covered, for instance, that the increasing populism in Western European news-
papers was strongly related to the success of populist parties. Likewise, while not
making assumptions about the cause and the effect, one can reasonably assume
that in the EU member-states, where the specific EU policies or the idea of inte-
gration in general are largely unpopular among the political elites, the media will
allocate less space to pro-EU voices than in member-states where elite attitudes
toward the European project are more favorable. This, in turn, would hinder the
EU institutions’ ability to shape public opinion.

Nationalism

In its broadest sense, Trautsch (2016) defines nationalism as the ideology which
creates, legitimizes, mobilizes, and integrates the nation, promotes the unity of the
national people, and demands a sovereign state for this nation. Fundamentally,
nationalism is a set of attitudes and behaviors made possible through interper-
sonal and mass group interactions. Stemming from psychological development
literature, humans learn as children to identify themselves and their place in the
world relative to those who care for them (Piaget, 1965). This process naturally
leads to powerful psycho-emotional bonds; it is through these meaningful rela-
tionships that people communicate a sense of collective identity to the child. Such
an identity is imprinted onto the child, who then assumes that role and develops
an internalized image of him or herself as an integral and meaningful part of the
social group (Druckman, 1994).
A side effect of such powerful group identification is the often-seen devel-
opment of an in-group and out-group mentality. This is often referred to as
intergroup bias (Dragojevic, Sink, & Mastro, 2017; Gorham, 2006) or in-group
favoritism (Oppiah, Knobloch-Westerwick, & Alter, 2013). The attitudinal and
behavioral demarcation of the “we vs. them” line is explained often in the commu-

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 29

nication literature in the framework of social identity theory (Borden, 2016; Cui,
2018; Nicholls & Rice, 2017). Whether these side effects occur or not depend on
the contents of the social group’s shared beliefs regarding definitional attributes of
group identity, i.e. what determines who belongs and who does not.
Smith (1991) defines nationalism as an ideological movement for attaining and
maintaining autonomy, unity, and identity on behalf of a population deemed by
some of its members to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’. He argues that
the notion that every nation must have its own state is not a necessary deduction
from the core doctrine of nationalism; rather, his definition emphasizes the pri-
macy of the cultural doctrine or, “more accurately, a political ideology with a cul-
tural doctrine at its center” (Smith, 1991, p. 74). Ethnic nationalism goes hand in
hand with populism, as ‘the people’ as a presumed family (unlike in a civic model,
where ‘the people’ are primarily the subject of common law) even when they are
not mobilized for political action, serve as “the final rhetorical court of appeal”
(Smith, 1991, p. 12). Leaders appeal to the ‘will of the people’ to justify their actions
and unite disparate social groups, and such appeals are well-received in societies
with an ethnic-based model of citizenship, as the conception of ‘family’ does not
imply political competition among its members.
Being a cultural phenomenon, contemporary nationalism is often fueled by
the antinomy between global and local and represents local reactions of political
systems and collective identities seeking to preserve and protect their cultures
from the threats caused by various supranational processes (Demertzis, Pap-
athanassopoulos, & Armenakis, 1999; King, 1991; Kinnvall, 2004). Critics of this
approach would argue that such a view cannot explain why states with strong
ethnic nationalism attitudes would actively seek EU membership. The possible
answers may lie in their geopolitical insecurity vis-à-vis Russia, in the case of
Poland and Hungary, or in potential economic benefits of integration.
While it may seem reasonable to suggest that nationalism and globalization
(or, particularly, EU integration in this case) can and do peacefully coexist (Smith,
1991), it is possible only when the perceived advantages of globalization outweigh
its cons. At that very point when political elites realize that the opposite is the case,
they engage in the construction of narratives which set the local against the global
and represent the latter as a threat. This, per se, of course, would unlikely lead to
the disintegration of the EU, but it does undermine Europe as a ‘community of
values’ which serves as the basis for the legitimacy of the latter. It is not a coinci-
dence that nationalism in Europe spiked in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis
and the 2015–2016 migration crisis (Wodak & Boukala, 2015).
Another interesting perspective on how the conflict between the European
and national identities unravels, particularly in Eastern Europe, was described
by Fox and Vermeersch (2010). They argue that because the pursuit of the EU

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30 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

membership has been largely shared by both left-wing and right-wing parties,
they lost their basis for differentiation. Instead, the ‘nation’ has provided a ful-
crum for interparty contestation. In other words, national interests serve as a
frame for marking political difference. Moreover, the porous borders of the EU
and the ambiguities in its minority protection policies provided far-right par-
ties with the tools to pursue nationalist agenda even beyond national borders.
Finally, they argue that currently it is precisely the opposition to the EU that
defines the new nationalist extremism in the region.

Share of voice, share of conversation and share of influence as media market

metrics

One of the key variables in this study, besides nationalism and public opinion on
the EU and its policies, is the EU’s share of voice. Traditionally share of voice as
a common metric has been used by advertising practitioners to measure the rel-
ative portion of available advertising space provided by an online platform to a
particular advertiser in comparison to other businesses placing advertising in this
medium. The classical formula for calculating share of voice estimates this met-
ric as a particular brand’s advertising divided by total market advertising (Smith,
2016) and reflects visibility and awareness (Ogneva, 2010a).
Share of voice as a variable answers the question of what is happening in the
media discourse with regard to a certain stakeholder, and industry research is
normally followed by more in-depth metrics that allow one to associate media
content with certain responses from the audiences. Analyzing share of voice as
a variable requires contextual interpretation, as this number in a vacuum does
not tell the researchers the whole story. Share of voice has to be compared to the
share of voice of other stakeholders in similar circumstances, as well as affective
response that the stakeholder’s coverage triggers among the audiences (Ogneva,
2010b), measured through a public opinion survey.
Most significantly, share of voice alone (when it comes to advertising) cannot
represent stakeholder’s salience since “larger brands do indeed hold smaller shares
of voice relative to their shares of market than smaller brands do” (Hansen &
Christensen, 2005, p. 317). In the circumstances when the brand has already estab-
lished strong relationships with the customers and holds a substantial portion of
the market, raising awareness about the product is not a major concern, which
leads to decreased share of voice. The relevance of share of voice as a leading met-
ric for advertising market analysis, especially used out of context, has been previ-
ously questioned in regard to some industries, where the major aim is to increase
the revenue. As Pesse (2007) noted, “ultimately, there are signs that the correlation

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 31

between share of voice and sales is fading. Some companies have seen their sales
stagnate while they have increased their share of voice” (p. 304).
The dynamics may differ across industries, as some advertisers still increase
their share of voice expenditures. However, in certain markets this increase only
reflects inflation rates and growing advertising costs. In others, advertisers’ desire
to target new audiences and their overall share of voice spending has a defensive
nature, “aimed at ‘maintaining the status quo,’ i.e. protecting existing market
shares rather than generating substantial numbers of new users” (Eagle, Kitchen,
& Rose, 2005, p. 67). In political communication research, however, share of voice
can still be a relevant tool for measuring stakeholder salience, since in political
news coverage (unlike in advertising) it reflects the gatekeeping process and
sources/voices that journalists choose to represent in media coverage rather than
the budget that a certain brand/stakeholder spent on placing its advertisements.
While calculating share of voice, researchers should remember that in certain
environments (on social media, in particular), it is relatively easy to forge (Penn,
2016). This would be relevant for politicians as well, especially if share of voice
is being measured through mentions on social media channels. For example, if
a politician, political party, or organization is using Twitter extensively, it would
automatically increase this stakeholder’s share of voice without actually reflecting
whether their information subsidies reach targeted audiences and whether they
increase the stakeholder’s salience in public opinion. Thus, share of voice mea-
sured through media coverage would be a more reliable tool for stakeholder
salience measurement.
The relevance of this variable for political communication researchers and
practitioners might be more evident than for advertising practitioners in modern
media markets. Translating this to the language of political communication
research, share of voice has been used to evaluate the amount of space a certain
political organization or politician occupies in the media (or social media) dis-
course and is being calculated in a similar vein, dividing the volume of text
devoted to this stakeholder by the overall available volume of the media content.
In that sense, evaluating the prominence of a brand is similar to evaluating the
prominence of a political actor or organization in the media discourse. The only
difference is that in the first case the research is concerned with a consumer’s
choice, while in the latter the major concern is a voter’s choice.
As Davis (2012) mentioned, “political candidates are the perfect example for
a share of voice comparison. There are usually several people in the race, with a
few frontrunners and a few hangers-on, just like most any product or business
category.” Thus, this study goes beyond surface-level analysis of the data received
from calculating share of voice alone and puts this metric in context, analyzing
this variable within the same model with public opinion data.

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32 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

The concept of share of voice is closely connected to the key concept in the
agenda-setting theory: salience. Salience refers to a relative emphasis on a certain
object(s) in comparison to other objects. The term object is used here in a broad
meaning to denote anything that an individual can have an opinion about (Guo
et al., 2012). It is similar to the term attitude object in psychology. The more an
object is salient in the public discourse, the greater the likelihood that an individ-
ual is aware of that object – that is, the more accessible that object is for the indi-
vidual’s recall. In political communication research, share of voice as a variable
could be used as one of the possible ways to operationalize salience. In particu-
lar, this study is concerned with the question of whether stakeholder salience in
agenda-setting studies could be measured not as simple frequencies, but as a more
detailed variable – share of voice.
Previously, advertising practitioners have mentioned that share of voice is
one of the most commonly used metrics, since it is relatively easy to calculate
and operationalize, but other variables, such as share of influence, are considered
more sophisticated by some and provide more useful data for analysis (O’Neill,
2010). Share of influence represents what place a certain stakeholder has in the
discussion initiated by the market influencers. In other words, it reflects how
often influencers mention the organization or an individual researchers are inter-
ested in. The disadvantage of this variable as a tool for agenda-setting researchers
is its inability to take media’s influence on public opinion into consideration, as
this variable bypasses traditional media and links stakeholders directly to the
public opinion response.
Another downside of this metric is that defining influencers is quite subjective
(Wolski, 2016). In political communication research, there could be numerous
approaches to differentiating influencers from the rest of participants contributing
to the media discourse. If influencers would be operationalized as influential
media, this variable could be objectively reflected through media circulation rank-
ings and audience sizes. However, if influencers will be defined as politicians, then
the task of detecting the most prominent ones would be less obvious.
Finally, advertising and marketing practitioners often refer to the third vari-
able – share of conversation. While some of them use share of voice and share of
conversation interchangeably (Ogneva, 2010b), some advertising market practi-
tioners highlight their conceptual differences. Some of the media market research
employ share of conversation as a variable that reflects how often a stakeholder is
mentioned in online discussions (Anderson, 2013; Pearson, 2009). For example,
share of voice for a political party would represent the volume of all information
subsidies, Twitter posts, paid advertising in media and news stories that mention
this party. Share of conversation, in turn, would reflect how often social media
users mention this party in their discussions. In other words, share of conversation

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 33

allows one to evaluate whether a stakeholder has been actually noticed by the audi-
ences and whether this stakeholder is salient in public opinion rather than just in
media coverage.
Despite the variety of media metrics employed in the industry, share of voice
as a variable has its value for academic research. It could be successfully employed
to detect first-level agenda-setting effects (stakeholder and issue salience;
McCombs et al., 1997), if compared to survey data and put in relevant context.
This study goes beyond the traditional agenda-setting hypothesis and is con-
cerned with possible relationships between agenda building, agenda indexing
(reflected through the share of voice as the key variable) and agenda-setting
effects, measured through public opinion survey data. It also aims to contribute to
the body of knowledge by distinguishing the three metrics often used interchange-
ably in the professional discourse – share of voice, share of influence, and share of
conversation – and to explore how the share of voice as a variable could be applied
in political communication research and become a useful tool for agenda-setting
researchers.
Based on the literature review, the following hypotheses have been put
forward:
H1: The amount of national news content sourced by the EU institutions (EU’s
share of voice) will be positively associated with domestic support for the EU
policies in regard to specific issues.
H2: The amount of national news content sourced by the EU institutions (EU’s
share of voice) will be positively associated with domestic sentiment toward
the European Union.
H3: The stronger nationalist sentiment within a country, the less likely news con-
tent will be sourced by the EU institutions.

Method

This study tests the hypotheses using four key variables: sentiment toward the EU,
support for EU policies, nationalism, and EU officials’ share of voice. The first
three variables were constructed using public survey data, while the last was cal-
culated based on quantitative content analysis data.
To determine to what extent media discourse in the EU member-states is
being sourced by the EU institutions and officials, a content analysis was con-
ducted with the data from the United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, and France to
examine the situation in the largest media markets in different parts of the EU,
including Eastern Europe. In each country, leading national daily newspapers (by

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34 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

circulation or readership, based on the data available from Statista) were selected
for analysis from the Lexis Nexis database (if one of a country’s top publications
was not available on Lexis Nexis, then the next most popular was selected, and
so on). Among the UK publications, the data (n = 102) were collected from The
Daily Mail and The Sun. Polish newspaper articles (n = 123) were collected from
Gazeta Wyborcza. The German sample included 116 news stories from Die Welt,
whereas French articles (n = 99) were retrieved from Le Figaro, Le Monde, and La
Croix. The selection of the timeline for the analysis corresponded to the avail-
ability of public opinion surveys data (most recent published data was collected
in 2016), therefore, articles published between January 1, 2016 and December 31,
2016 were searched, using European Commission OR European Parliament as the
search term. Given the large number of articles available from each country, the
articles were collected with the application of skip interval using a systematic ran-
dom sampling method. This resulted in the total sample of 440 news stories.
The sample was coded by three bilingual coders; all three are English speakers,
and one of the coders speaks French, one speaks German, and one speaks Polish.
After several rounds of coder training, a sufficient level of intercoder reliability
for the presence of EU-sourced content variable was established (α = .706). The
coders were to determine whether the news article has any content sourced by
the EU-affiliated institutions/officials. In case any officials were quoted, the coders
recorded computer estimates of the word count for the quote, and the article’s total
word count. Share of voice as a variable was calculated by dividing EU officials’
quote word count by the total article word count.
Public opinion data was retrieved from the Pew Research Center Global Atti-
tude Survey. Nationally representative samples of respondents were surveyed in
each country in April-May 2016. Responses from respondents in France (n = 999),
the UK (n = 1460), Poland (n = 1003), and Germany (n = 996) were used to con-
struct composite latent variables to test the hypotheses.

Sentiment toward the EU

The variable was measured as a country’s mean score for the two items on the sur-
vey questionnaire: favorability toward the EU and support for the increased EU
integration and delegation of governing functions to the EU institutions.

Approval of the EU policies

This was operationalized as a mean score for the three polarizing questions: (1)
approval of the EU’s economic policies; (2) refugee policies; (3) and foreign policy
(dealing with Russia, in particular).

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 35

Nationalism

Due to the issue of social desirability effect potentially influencing responses on

the questions concerning nationalism, this latent variable was constructed as a
composite index, based on the question measuring isolationism, three questions
measuring cultural and religious nationalism, and five questions measuring ethnic
nationalism (approval of ethnic diversity and attitude to refugees in particular).
Researchers distinguish among various types of nationalisms (ethnic, religious,
cultural, civic, among others). Thus, this composite nationalism variable allowed
for different ways nationalism could be reflected in survey responses.

Results

To test whether the countries’ scores differ on nationalism index, a one-way

ANOVA was conducted in SPSS. The test was significant, F(3) = 91.12, p < .001.
Bonferroni post-hoc test revealed that all possible country comparisons were sig-
nificant (p < .005 and lower), except for the difference in nationalism between
French and German respondents (p > .05). Table 1 below reflects mean scores on
each index for each country in the study. Poland scored higher than other coun-
tries on the nationalism scale, and, consistent with H3, lower on share of voice. In
Germany, on the contrary, the lowest nationalism attitudes corresponded to the
highest share of voice of the EU officials in local news coverage. Interestingly, EU
sentiment is the lowest among the British respondents, which coincides with the
Brexit vote date (June 23, 2016) that happened in the middle of the sampling time
frame for the survey. EU policy support is on an equal level in both Germany and
Poland.

Table 1. Mean scores on the three indexes and share of voice for studied countries
Country Share of voice Policy support Nationalism EU sentiment
France −0.1 −0.11 −0.18   0.04
Germany   0.41   0.12 −0.19   0.13
Poland −0.31   0.12   0.43   0.27
UK   0.05 −0.09 −0.04 −0.31

Based on the questions from the survey, three indexes for three composite
variables have been created: sentiment towards the EU, nationalism, and support
for the EU policies. Before creating indexes, all data was converted into z scores,
with answers such as “do not know” or “refused to answer” recoded as miss-
ing data and replaced with the means. Z scores were summed up and divided

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36 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

by the number of variables included in each index. Share of voice was calcu-
lated based on the coding data. This variable was operationalized as EU offi-
cials’ quote word count divided by the total article word count. Finally, all three
indexes and the share of voice variable were converted into Z scores to make
them comparable. Since the survey sample (more than 900 respondents for each
country, 4462 respondents from the countries studied in this paper) was bigger
than coding sample (more than 100 items for each country, 416 items from four
countries), 416 items were randomly selected from the survey dataset for data
analysis, since AMOS software requests the same amount of items in each vari-
able to assess the data.
To test the hypotheses, a recursive over identified (the number of sample
moments exceeded the number of parameters) model has been created in AMOS,
with nationalism serving as a predictor influencing share of voice, and share of
voice, consecutively, affecting both EU policy support and pro-European senti-
ment as dependent variables. The model as follows was not a good fit: χ2 = 105.4,
p < .0001; RMSEA = .29, 95% CI [.24, .34]; CFI = .02; SRMR = .16. Both Kol-
mogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests suggested non-normal data distribu-
tion for all four variables (p < .0001 in all cases). While skewness and kurtosis did
not seem to fall out of normal range for EU policy support, nationalism, and pro-
EU sentiment (within the range from −1 to 1), variable share of voice had notice-
able skewness (3.84) and kurtosis (19.82) deviations. To address data distribution,
bootstrapping with 5000 samples and 95% CI was applied in all subsequent statis-
tical operations. Linear regression results supported the results obtained by test-
ing a model in AMOS: nationalism was not significantly related to the amount of
space European Union officials received in the news coverage (H3), B = .08, p > .05.
Increased share of voice also was not directly related to EU policies support (H1),
B = −.06, p < .05, and pro-EU sentiment (H2), B = .002, p > .05.
To conduct exploratory analysis and analyze whether these variables might be
related to each other, considering their possible indirect influence on each other
as moderators and/or mediators, a path analysis was conducted with PROCESS
macro in SPSS employing model 14, where nationalism served as an independent
variable, pro-EU sentiment served as a mediator, and EU policy support was
placed as a dependent variable. Share of voice was included in the model as a mod-
erator, affecting the influence of EU sentiment on EU policy support.
Nationalism had significant negative effect on pro-European sentiment,
−.3057, p < .0001. Thus, increased level of nationalistic attitudes among country’s
respondents is related to lower pro-European sentiment. Pro-EU sentiment
served as a significant mediator in the model, positively related to EU policy sup-
port, .3295, p < .0001. Share of voice did not affect the relation between EU senti-
ment and policy support as a moderator, −.0503, p > .05. Finally, the direct effect

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 37

of nationalism on EU policy support was negative and significant, −.1325, p < .01,
meaning that increased levels of nationalism are related to decreased EU policies
support. The results of path analysis are summarized in Figure 1.

Note: < 0.0001***, .001 to .01**, .01 to .05*, > .05ns

Figure 1.

Discussion

Despite the lack of confirmation for the hypotheses, two trends are important to
note: First, that direction of increase and decrease of share of voice corresponds
with the hypothesized direction, which suggests potential moderators to this rela-
tionship. Secondly, the results also point towards still unexplored elements of the
agenda setting theory that might play a role in this process. To name one, lev-
els of need for orientation paired with self-serving bias in news selection might
potentially limit the publics’ willingness to consume more media content related
to the subject they already have a set opinion about. Such possibility might explain
that societies already rejecting EU ideals of European integration might be less
likely to pay attention to EU-sourced content, which in turn limits the media’s
agenda-setting influence. Testing the third hypothesis also revealed no direct rela-
tions between nationalism levels and share of voice in the European media. No
direct influence of public opinion on agenda indexing could indicate the necessity
for researchers to consider numerous gatekeeping factors that could influence the
relationship between the variables. In other words, the structure of factors affect-
ing what sources will be selected by the journalists to be cited, and how much
space will be provided to them in the story, can be more sophisticated than pre-
viously thought. As Roberts (2005) mentioned, “gatekeeping models have become
increasingly sophisticated as theorists consider wider ranges of the external pres-
sures on gatekeepers and the internal characteristics of the individual gatekeepers
and the system that employs them” (p. 2).

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38 Sofiya Tarasevich et al.

Testing existing data using path analysis could be just the first step to detect
complex structures of factors influencing the process. Future research could
address the question of connecting more complex models and constructs affecting
the gatekeeping process. The results revealed by testing the direct effect of nation-
alism on the share of voice indicate that gatekeeping is not directly affected by
public opinion, which opens the potential for discovering numerous prospective
moderators and mediators involved in this process. It’s important to notice that
increased nationalism did correspond to decreased share of voice consistently
across the sample, which supports the possibility of existing mediators that could
connect public opinion and agenda indexing. In other words, the data had a
consistent trend across the samples: increased nationalism did correspond to
decreased share of voice, but the insignificance of direct effect indicates that this
relationship could be possibly mediated by a third variable, or even several vari-
ables, which opens direction for future research. Nationalism might have no effect
on share of voice because survey respondents were ordinary citizens, but share of
voice is determined by the media and editors, not citizens. And editors might be
affected by other factors, besides public opinion, that influence agenda indexing
(including agenda-building factors like the policy of the owner of a media outlet).
The absence of a direct effect of share of voice on policy support and pro-
EU sentiment, in turn, shows the limits of the media’s agenda-setting capacity on
certain markets (in this case, EU media markets), following the notion made by
Walgrave and Van Aelst (2006) that “we still cannot answer the basic question
whether the mass media determine the political agenda or, put more precisely,
under what specific circumstances the mass media are able to boost political
attention for issues” (p. 89). Analyzing the extent to which respondents are sus-
ceptible to agenda-setting effects helps to outline the limits of media’s agenda-set-
ting capacity and detect possible moderators influencing the effect.
The results showing respondents’ limited agenda-setting susceptibility in the
countries with higher levels of nationalism could be used by media and political
communication practitioners while tailoring messages towards certain audiences
as agenda-building susceptibility might vary depending on the region, and this
could change the outcome of a political campaign, or the nature of local media
coverage. As Wanta (1997) mentioned, respondents’ agenda-setting susceptibility
determines the outcomes of the agenda-setting process. He highlighted the
importance of focusing on individual respondents in agenda setting research,
since “it is the individual who ultimately displays the agenda-setting effect” (p. 2),
which is achieved by analyzing public survey data.
The major conclusion of this study is the connection between nationalism,
general favorability towards institutional organizations, and support for certain
policies, as it reflects a significant mediated relationship between the three.

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 Ethnic nationalism and gatekeeping 39

Significant influence of nationalism on EU policy support through the pathway

of pro-EU sentiment provides useful insights for strategic communication
practitioners on how general attitude can affect voters’ perception of particu-
lar policies, as well as how nationalistic views decrease the sentiment towards
pan-European institutions and international integration.

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Address for correspondence

Sofiya Tarasevich
University of Florida
1885 Stadium Rd, Gainesville, FL 32611
USA
starasevich@ufl.edu

Co-author information

Liudmila Khalitova Barbara Myslik

University of Florida University of Florida
mila.khalitova@ufl.edu b.myslik@ufl.edu
Phillip Arceneaux Spiro Kiousis
University of Florida University of Florida
parcen1588@ufl.edu skiousis@jou.ufl.edu
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