The Medial Profile of Anti-EU Groups in the UK

The UK has the most fully developed set of anti-European Union groups of any country, from national political parties through to local grassroots organisations and sectoral lobbies. For most of these groups, the media plays a central role in their work, enabling them to reach audiences much greater than otherwise possible. In this paper, the profile of such groups in the national print media will be considered, using frequency analysis. This analysis demonstrates that coverage, while generally increasing over time, remains very uneven and episodic, both in time and between groups. These findings are further backed up by study of discourse markers. Differences between newspapers are discussed, with particular reference to the general political affiliation of the newspaper, as well as its position on European integration. The paper concludes by considering the consequences of this pattern of media coverage for anti-EU groups at a time when the integration process would appear to be particularly susceptible to expressions of opposition