The Europeanization of German Public Service Television

The concept of the European public sphere and the concept of a European identity have mostly only been addressed separately in the past. In this work it is argued that the emergence of a European public sphere and the construction of a European identity are closely related and that both depend on an Europeanization of public discourse. Therefore a theoretical model is proposed that describes the Europeanization of public discourse as a three-dimensional process and combines elements from both strands of research. This model is used to empirically test the under-researched work that the Europeanization of media coverage which is the main forum for public discourse occurs as conflict-induced. To this end a quantitative content analysis is conducted to examine to what extent editorials in the influential German public news broadcast Tagesthemen become Europeanized in the context of the European sovereign debt crisis.