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The european press and the euro:
Media Agenda-Setting in a Cross-National Environment

Olaf Werder
Doctoral Student
College of Journalism & MC/ Grad Division
University of Florida
2000 Weimer Hall
PO Box 118400
Gainesville, FL 32611
Ph.: 352/ 392-6758
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This paper is presented as a student entry to the International Communications Division during the AEJMC Conference, August 2000 in Phoenix. The author would like to thank Dr. Wayne Wanta, without whose constant support and encouragement this paper would not exist in its current form.
The european press and the euro:
Media Agenda-Setting in a Cross-
National Environment


Abstract

Coverage of the Euro currency introduction was analyzed in the leading news publications in the UK and Germany. Specifically, we probed whether (1) coverage of the same cross-national issue differed in level of support and (2) the two national media applied different news frames.
The study showed that the London Times opposed the Euro even with pro-Euro sources, whereas the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung maintained neutrality. The Times used an episodic, while the F.A.Z. employed a thematic style. The difference in styles allowed for different covering of subissues.
 The European press and the Euro:
Media Agenda-Setting in a Cross-National Environment
After nearly three decades since the seminal agenda-setting work by McCombs and Shaw (1972), an impressive number of research projects was conducted to study media agendas, public agendas and the relationship between them (from Weimann and Brosius, 1994). The vast majority of these studies, however, dealt with ethnocentric research during and outside elections within specific countries, predominantly oriented and conducted toward phenomena in the U.S. Despite the fact that "similar methodological approaches, pointing to the same conclusions, further strengthen the validity of the agenda-setting concept" (see Semetko and Mandelli, 1997), cross-national comparative research would move the agenda-setting theory into the transnational arena.
As Semetko and Mandelli (1997) argued, cross-national agenda-setting "provides an opportunity to examine how those involved in the political communication process - publics, political parties, and media - behave when operating under different institutional constraints." In the same article, the authors ask for two angles of future cross-national research efforts on agenda setting and the related issues of priming and framing - one looking at the formation of media agendas and story frames (including contributing parties), the other looking at the influences of those agendas and frames on public opinion. Semetko and Mandelli contended that it is crucial to integrate a political culture approach to the cognitive approach to agenda-setting in a cross-national arena. This would not only help
        The European Press
        and the Euro


explain, how the different media operate, but also how they are influenced and are influential themselves. We would stand to gain from this research, as it dives further into the "international expedition" sub-theme of the theory. It would also help explain why researchers seemingly found that the original hypothesis isn't working as well in other countries as it is in the U.S., and if that indeed is the case. Furthermore, since this research will also need to make frequent excursions into the related research field of influences on media content and political agenda formation, it will ultimately help to further advance agenda-setting research altogether by merging it with these other areas.
The present study seeks to bring quantitative data to the discussion by comparing the agendas of the leaderships of two member countries of the European Union, the UK and Germany, regarding the supra-national issue of the EU-wide currency change, to the agenda of reports in the two leading newspapers in the respective countries, thus examining the transfer of salience and frames at the public level.
Background
On January 1, 1999, the European Union embarked on becoming a true monetary union via a transitional process, which will be concluded by January 2002 with the introduction of Euro banknotes and coins and withdrawal of national money. During this preparation time and setup of the European Central Bank (Spring through Winter 1998) of the larger member countries, only the UK opted out of joining in 1999. Despite its known longstanding reservation toward continental Europe, the UK had become increasingly tied in with the EU and benefited from its existence.  Hence, this decision can have potential negative consequences for the economy and political position of the UK within the EU. Likewise, Germany's decision to let go of the strongest currency on the continent (the Deutsche Mark) can impact the country negatively in its role as a keystone financial force and can hurt the country's national economic pride as the "anchor of Europe."
It is, therefore, in the interest of either country's leadership to "sell" its decision as the right one for its national public's welfare and prosperity. Drawing samples from pre-change 1998 and immediate post-change 1999 allows the testing of Nelson et al's notion of "framing serving as bridges between elite discourse about a problem or issue and popular comprehension of that issue"(1997).
Applying the concept of framing (Iyengar, 1991) we suspect that the use of "episodic" vs. "thematic" media frame, used respectively in the two countries, will lead readers unto making internal vs. external attributions for the social issue and thus give us a clue as to why the countries' news media and public seem to be on opposite poles of this agenda topic.

Literature Review
There has been a dearth of research in the cross-cultural field of agenda-setting, which might have led some researchers to believe - based on some studies in Europe - that there is less clear support for the agenda-setting hypothesis outside the U.S. (Semetko and Mandelli, 1997). However, the same authors also note, that "the absence of evidence to support the agenda-setting hypothesis does not mean that other important media effects on the public were entirely absent" (p.206).
As a matter of fact, in the field of comparative political analysis there are numerous studies (e.g. Wood and Peake, 1998; Pollack, 1997; Saideman, 1994; Livingston, 1992) that look at international agenda setting as a means for political decision makers to shape a public agenda on foreign or international policy. Livingston (1992), for instance, conducted an analysis on the attempt of the Reagan administration to remove North American-South American relations from the international agenda, and found that agenda success was "dependent on prevailing international practices and the access points to the international agenda they create" (p.313). Saideman (1994) asserts in his study, "agenda-setting is an interactive process, in which politicians are influenced by both domestic interests and the activities of leaders of other states and international organizations" (p.288). He also found certain conditions within a nation (apathy, ambivalence, ambiguous solutions), under which agenda-
setting matters. Admittedly, the focus of agenda research in the political science field is primarily targeted toward the political agendas, i.e. the influences of the agendas of political actors and their relationship to the public. The media are not the focus here and are most often even neglected as a unit of analysis.
If we recall though the influences that interest groups can have on the media (McCombs et al, 1991; Lang and Lang, 1991; Gandy, 1982; Tuchman, 1978; Huckins, 1999), we cannot deny that those two agendas could be somewhat related. In our case, we might need to consider that the news story will need to filter through more gatekeepers than a domestic one would. News might travel from the on-site reporter through editors at the local wire house, the wire services headquarters or home country office to the local newspaper bureau, where various editors scan it again. With the assumption that many news organizations will use international wire services for leads, one could conclude that in the end the news will be the same for all national media, a so-called stacked category. In a related study Whitney and Becker (1982) laid this notion to rest though, finding support for the fact that wire news are not uncritically accepted in newspaper and TV newsrooms. They didn't deny, however, an initial influence of the wire news bureaus. In a sense then, we are dealing with more than one single "Mr. Gates" in a gate-keeping role. This will be reflected by the ultimate media agenda-setting process but will also make an influence by an interested political group or individual even more difficult. This notion can be traced back in a way to Livingston's access point idea. But how do we perceive the stories to be told and told differently by the two countries' media organizations, if indeed that is the case?
Most likely the two most helpful answers come from two interesting findings in agenda-setting research: issue categorization (obtrusive-unobtrusive, abstract-concrete) and interpersonal agenda as a contingent conditions to the process and effects. Saideman (1984) pointed out the existence of conditions for the workings of international agenda-setting processes. Taking it a step further, Miller and Wanta (1996) regarded story frames as an "important variable to the agenda-setting process of different demographics." Wanta and Hu (1993) also mentioned story frames as contingent conditions in the agenda-setting effect of international news. And Weimann and Brosius (1994) argued that influential individuals (could it be national news editors?) would frame emerging news to their own personal network, splitting the agenda-setting process effectively into a two-step flow. If story frames are an important condition to cross-national agenda-setting effects, we need to define a frame and ask
, how the media frame issues.
Goffman's thematic question on frame analysis (see Manning, 1980) was, "under what circumstances do we think things are real?" He thus attributed "two kinds of understanding to social life, a literal one (what is going on?), and a metaphoric one (what is the meaning of what is going on?)" (p. 272). The concept of a frame is used, among other reasons, to "show that as actions change our definitions (or frames), we can alter our original meaning and confer new ones, or add them to the first set" (p. 273). Following this logic, Gitlin (1980) argued, "media frames are persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis and exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse" (p.7). This notion does, then, define a news frame in terms of ideological or value perspectives. By excluding, e.g., all the benefits that a European currency might bring and emphasizing its detrimental effects on the British economy, the British media would eff
ectively have framed the news story very differently from the German media, which might have highlighted the positives of the change and suppressed the negatives.
According to Iyengar (1993), the media frame issues in either "episodic" or "thematic" terms. "The episodic frame depicts public issues in terms of concrete instances or specific events - a homeless person (_) or an attempted murder -, which make "good pictures." The thematic news frame, in contrast, places public issues in some general or abstract context, which typically takes the form of a "takeout" or "backgrounder" report, frequently featuring "talking heads"" (Iyengar, 1993, p. 219f). While thematic news framing is more objective, in-depth and analytic, it is also seen as dull and slow and, due to its "subsurface" reporting style, vulnerable to charges of bias and editorializing. Episodic framing, on the other hand, is fast-paced, attention grabbing and achieves "objectivity" via focusing on the "hard" news. It will also, however, fail to include significant issues, if they are deemed not newsworthy due to a lack of "good pictures". It can be speculated that this latter point could be a reason for why Brosius and Kepplinger (1995) found only limited support for their assumptions regarding killer issues, which they saw working in a replacement model, eclipsing other agenda issues on German TV.
To avoid any ambiguities in our findings, it is important to look at agenda issues that have news value in either country. These are usually those that either originated from supranational sources, governing to an extent over both countries and can hence impact both country's policies or economies, or, as an alternative, a national source (national government or the like), which makes decisions of the same multinational impact. Examples to this point would be employment issues within NAFTA (Mexico and US), oil price settings after warfare and embargos within OPEC (Venezuela and Iran) or the unified currency debate in the EU (Great Britain and Germany). The importance of this point becomes obvious when we consider the low public interest level of stories about Country A, reported to the public of Country B, with no or minimal actual impact on Country B. In a study of that particular nature, Wanta and Hu (1993) found that other than high-conflict or direct involvement frames, most i
nternational news stories have little relevance to the average (in this case: American) citizen. The findings show that agenda items, which are "just" international in kind, will probably have less chance to be noticed than those international agendas, which indeed impact the home country.
As a result, the national news media may pay far more attention to those issues. More importantly, to the extent of the independence and antagonistic positioning of the national media landscape in a given country, the international story will be more "localized," i.e. framed by the national media in a way that best suits the country's interest, in which said media operate. There is also strong possibility that some news frames form a better negative or positive argument. In other words, the antagonistic media might use certain frames because they provide good arguments against the international issue. The execution itself, however, will also depend on the style of storytelling that a national media subscribes to. It only seems logical to assume that every culture has a journalistic legacy, which dictates in some way what style of storytelling a country's press applies. This latter point alludes to the integration of political culture approaches to understand political and social c
hange. As Semetko and Mandelli (1997) argue, "comparative political communication research would benefit from integrating (the above approach) with a more cognitive approach to understanding public opinion." They then give an illustration of this statement by saying that "political culture helps to explain why a U.S. news story about poverty often is framed in such a way as to place the responsibility on the individual rather than on the system or state (Iyengar, 1991), whereas a story about poverty is likely to be framed differently in most European social welfare states" (p.206).
Hypotheses
The first research question addressed here, then, is how are international stories regarding a change from national currencies to the European Currency (Euro) framed in two EU member-countries that are politically opposite on the issue itself? We speculate that different ideologies of the news media and their sources toward the international issue will lead to different influences on the story, i.e. media that oppose an international issue will engage in a more spirited debate on the issue and use more sources, than those media that favor the issue. Furthermore, media that oppose the international issue will communicate and support an agenda detrimental to their sources' intentions, i.e. they will maintain a negative position even if a quoted source seems to promote a positive view on the issue. Those that support the issue, will communicate a like-minded agenda, i.e. they stay predominantly neutral and report matter-of-factly. Thus, based on the above scenario, we propose to test the following hypotheses:
H1: The London Times will be more likely to quote anti-Euro sources than the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Since the Times is located in a country that is opposed to this international issue, they will be more likely to follow the national sentiment on the issue.
H2: The London Times will be more likely to maintain an anti-Euro position, even if sources that they use for quotations support the issue, whereas the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will follow its sources' positions.
Since the Times is located in a country in which its press has a more independent and critical position toward its own government and since every issue regarding the European Union is seen much more negatively by this independent press, without regard where the government stands, they will remain critical even when fulfilling their journalistic role of quoting sources from various positions.
The second research question addressed here is: How did the individual news organizations go about communicating their position, i.e. what style did they use to support their arguments. If it could be found, e.g., that Germany's media would predominantly apply a thematic frame in reporting on cross-national issues - mostly analytical, factual news, at times tainted by Euro-centric interest group influences - and that the UK would subscribe largely to an episodic frame - mostly featured stories and personal comments, depicting heart-wrenching national (i.e. British) tragedies, but omitting vital information otherwise - we could gain an understanding, as to why, if so, the countries' news media and public seem to be on opposite poles of this agenda.
Furthermore, the news media, applying an episodic style, will cover more aspects of the issue (subissues) to make a case for their position than those applying a thematic style. Based on this scenario, we propose to test the following hypotheses:
H3: The London Times will be more likely to use episodic story frames to arrive at its negative position, whereas the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will be more likely to use thematic story frames to arrive at its neutral position.
To make arguments against the Euro, the Times has to appeal to a deeper mistrust of the British population toward all European issues. This is exaggerated by the fact that the Euro decision was a democratic majority vote of the other countries, leaving Britain already in an uneasy position. The best means to achieve this daunting task seems to deliver real-life stories and opinions against the Euro rather than listing factual information or data, as the former appeal better to emotions.
H4: The London Times will be more likely than the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to cover a wider range of subissues, connected with the Euro issue, to support its position.
It seems plausible that a tendency toward episodic styles for the above-mentioned reasons will compel the Times to look for categories (subissues), where this style is most applicable. Unlike the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, whose thematic style will be well-suited for the usual key subissues of a currency change, i.e. financial and economic (both full of data and "dry" information), the Times will need to look at other aspects of Euro influences, such as social, personal, political, ethical, cultural and so on. This consequently will broaden their range of covered subissues.

Methodology
The study examines media coverage of the "birth of the Euro" currency from December 1, 1998 through January 30, 1999, the two months surrounding the historic date of January 1, 1999. This timeframe was chosen because it was the period in which European news media carried most coverage of the issue, simply because it became one of the most emphasized issues on the continent.
The case of the birth date of the Euro was chosen, as this date effectively marked the beginning of the finalization of a ten-year, three-step process within the Union to move from economic coordination to a single currency, supervised by the European Central Bank. As this obviously will impact the EU's member countries in a profound way in all facets of life, it is expected that the national media, as well as the media's sources and the public, will voice strong opinions regarding the issue.
The method chosen is a content analysis of the Times of London in the U.K. and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, with the individual paragraph as the unit of analysis. Both of these papers are not only among the largest in circulation and readership in their respective countries, but they are also considered as one of the most respected and professional, as well as newspapers "of record."  The paragraph is chosen as the unit of analysis as it will support the finding of hypothesized discrepancies between press and source as well as varying story frames within the story.
Issues
The study focuses on four areas:
ù       Story Type, i.e. what kind of reporting style (hard news (factual information), feature (snapshots, slice-of-life piece), commentary (reporter's position)) was used to report on the issue
ù       Overall tone of the news story, scored as pro-Euro (conversion to Euro and its consequences is supported in tone and voice), neutral (conversion debate is covered without emotional attachment or opinion about it) and anti-Euro (conversion to Euro is opposed, argument against it are brought forth), from the position of the media themselves
ù       Sources quoted in the story, divided into official (i.e. governmental) and non-official (i.e. experts, citizens), and their position toward the issue.
ù       Subissues within the overall story, i.e. which aspect of the country's sphere (economic, society, culture, taxation, banking) was mostly reported on, and how was the introduction of the single currency interpreted to have an impact on those subissues.
Using Holsti's formula (Holsti, 1969) the intercoder reliability across the categories ranged from 0.72 to 0.98 with an average of 0.85.

Results
The content analysis led to 61 stories with 579 paragraphs for the Times of London and 68 stories with 351 paragraphs for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Hypothesis 1 argued that a negative stance on the Euro-issue by the London Times will be related to the use of likewise issue-opposing sources for direct quotes in the story. Out of the 579 paragraphs in the London Times 34.8% had an anti-Euro slant, 55.1% were neutral and only 10.0% were positive. The German F.A.Z. published 5.1% anti-Euro paragraphs, 84.0% had a neutral tone and 10.8% were positive. As Table 1 shows, the Times quoted about four times as many negative (or anti-Euro) sources as the F.A.Z. did. As a matter of fact, two-thirds of the quoted sources in the German paper commented as objective on the Euro debate as the paper did itself, whereas quoted sources in the British paper engaged in a lively debate on the pros and cons of the issue. The data therefore largely support Hypothesis 1.
It was argued further that the London Times would maintain their opposition even if the source were in favor of the Euro. Table 2 shows that while the data for the F.A.Z. basically follow the paper's distribution, where source position and media position are the same, the Times remains reserved or opposed to the Euro, even when they quote a source who endorsed the change (80.9% of its quoted pro-sources).
To illustrate this surprising point further, the Times is quoted, writing in a story from 12/5/98, "To many Britons, Europe seems like a high-speed train, hurtling its reluctant passengers into a new millennium of continental government where Britain becomes a dependent province. (_) There are plenty of reasons why the vision is plausible. Successive governments, from Ted Heath's to Tony Blair's have tried to soothe British fears by playing down the political ambitions of the Union, only to be swept along with the rush to integrate", while they quote an official in the same article, saying "The British don't realize what a strong hand they have. They just have to keep their nerve." The paper also quotes its own Prime Minister in an article from 12/15/98, saying, "(_) a majority of Europeans are not part of a vile conspiracy to nobble Britain," to which the paper responds in the same paragraph, "The Prime Minister is only half right."
Finally, in an article from 12/18/98, the Times admits "most Eurosceptic national newspapers have redoubled (throughout the last month) their campaign against the Euro", yet they also quote again their Prime Minister, saying that "a lot of the scare stories were simply untrue." In that same article, one of the Times' correspondents, Peter Riddell, pointed out that "Blair's article demonstrated that the alliance of convenience between new Labor and the sceptic press, always bogus, was now, at last, over. Blair and his Government had emerged in their true pro-European colors."
The Times also allows many more negative sources to be heard, in the case they stay neutral; 21% of the times, the paper remains objective, an anti-Euro source is quoted. And even in the rare case when the newspaper supports the Euro-debate, 7% of their quoted sources oppose the Euro. The German paper has not a single negative voice in that case. Hypothesis 2, then, seems to be largely supported as well.
Hypothesis 3 said that the London Times will apply an episodic style, which will allow for negative real-life examples and personal comments by influenced individuals of the Euro, while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will use a thematic style, whose factual tone will give data without much opinion. Table 3 illustrates that the Times uses feature stories and commentaries about as much as hard news (45.8% vs. 54.2%), while the F.A.Z. uses the hard news angle 75% of the time. This data support the initial assumption that the British newspaper examined here applies an episodic news style more often than does the German newspaper, which largely is committed to a thematic style. The heavier use of the episodic style is also the vehicle through which the anti-Euro position is communicated. While only 19% of the hard news paragraphs have an anti-Euro bend, 33% of the features and 62% of the commentary are in that tone. Interestingly enough, the German F.A.Z. uses the commentary to sup
port the Euro (31% of all commentary style) but overall remains neutral in even the features. Hypothesis 3 is then largely supported by the data.
It was finally asserted in Hypothesis 4 that the different news styles result in different width in the coverage of connected subissues, which in turn serve to illustrate the impact points of the Euro issue. In other words, an episodic style allows for analyses of more subissues, such as cultural, social and political, areas where the more personal approach makes sense, but also can be used to rationalize why a position is maintained. The thematic style, which is by its nature matter-of-factly and removed, will only make sense for subissues where pure data delivery is most applicable.
Table 4 shows that the Times uses the feature story style in particular when dealing with cultural, personal and even economic issues and the commentary style, when dealing with cultural/political and economic issues. The F.A.Z. reverts to these styles only rarely. Overall the table shows that the British paper looks at many more subissues, impacted by the Euro than does the German paper, which devotes more than 50% of its coverage to the monetary aspect of the Euro-debate. These data support largely the hypothesis.

Discussion
This study compares the media coverage of the leading newspapers in two of the key member countries in the European Union on the cross-national debate of the Euro currency. The purpose of the study was to illustrate that the media occupy a more independent position regarding nationally debated issues vis-…-vis their news sources than routinely assumed and in so influence the news agenda of the public as much as political news makers, based on their own position towards the agenda issue. Support was furthermore found for the assumption that different countries and cultures not only use different news style frames, but also use these different frames as they play different communication roles in their respective countries. Framing of a story - or new writing in general - is certainly influenced by a country's political landscape and the position if the press in it. The recent case of the shutdown of liberal media organizations in Iran may attest to this notion. However, the two chosen countries here are in many ways similar in their political, economic and social makeup. What can and will set them apart is the cultural heritage and values of those covering the news. These diverse values seem to affect the different position and chosen frames for an issue which seemingly should be covered identically, as it has the ultimate same source (the European Parliament).
The study found support for Iyengar's assumption of the existence of two different news styles and serves to explain different media agenda phenomena in different countries. One of the most interesting finding is not so much the fact that Britain stood politically on opposite sides with Germany regarding the Euro conversion debate, but that it seemed that the British media were far more opposed to the impending change than the British government was. E.g., in an article from 12/2/98 the Times notes, "Britain wants different things from Europe than do France and Germany" and goes on to say that "Mr. Blair is a man who likes to please others. He wants to be liked by his European partners." In another article, dated 12/6/98, the Times notes, "The government underestimated Germany's finance minister and is being bounced towards a federal Europe. (_) When the crime was made more heinous by linking tax changes to the next round of European integration (which was part of the Euro debate,
 author's comment), Blair's inner circle knew they faced trouble, especially with Britain's eurosceptic media. (_) From the moment the drama broke, Alastair Campbell, Blair's official spokesman, accused the press of hysteria. But the spin doctors faced a hopeless task."
If we believe the usual flow of agenda-setting effects leading from source to media to public (see Wanta, 1997, for example), then we are dealing here with a break in the normal agenda setting-process, in which the media activity is an intervening variable to the channel for policy makers to provide information to the public.
Of specific concern here was not only if the media would counteract their sources, but also how they would go about doing so. The data show that the British press indeed promoted its own agenda to the public. Given the fact that the average British citizen expects to receive information about European issues primarily from the media (Eurobarometer, 1/1999), this marks indeed a powerful position and parallels that of the government (79% responded to the Eurobarometer survey that they would expect information on European issues to come from both the media and the government). In Germany the media are still an important information source (76%), but as far as the Euro is concerned, most of the Germans expect to be informed by their financial institutions (81%). This points to the following explanations:
Germany is less concerned with the Euro issue's implications beyond the obvious change of currency and banking. The German media therefore seem to concentrate on this issue and update the public on activities in the banking and stock trading arenas. The reporting style applied seems to fit with what the German public expects from its press, as the relative few non-neutral sources attest. It also points to the more political aspect of integration of the country into the Union in general and acceptance of this integration by the policy makers and the public. As a result, there is no need to discuss every detail of the Euro debate, in particular its negative implications. The German newspaper, hence, does not only maintain a relatively objective reporting style throughout the examined time period, but also concentrates on subissues that deal with financial (currency, European Central Bank, etc.) and broader economic (national business climate, stock markets, etc.) issues. Those subissues are not only by their very nature more prone to be used with a factual style or frame, but also offer the F.A.Z. the chance to cater to the public's expectations from its newspapers. This thematic frame is even largely maintained when a story angle asked for a feature-like style, e.g. in a story about the indifference of the population in the "Saarland" region (a small German state, bordering France and the home state of then German finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine) to the Euro debate. Despite the potential to include its own position, the F.A.Z. stays as neutral as possible and basically presents this feature-type story more as a background information piece, providing more hard news than opinion.
Britain, on the other hand, seems to be a country where its public expects a lively debate of issues, in particular issues that concern Britain's leading position in Europe and the world. Quite contrary to Germany, then, the episodic style is used more often, as it gives the more opinionated Times a means to play out all the drama and personal aspects of the Euro story. Although economic and financial subissues are still leading topics, those are reported in a way that opens avenues for personal positions. The frequent use of features and commentaries for those subissues demonstrates this.
At the same time, the more frequent use of cultural (or political) issues, i.e. issues framing the Euro debate in a larger debate about Britain's role in and position toward the European Union in general, both from a contemporary and historic perspective, imply that the more negative position of the Times toward the Euro has deeper roots than this particular supranational story. It also shows that the use of multiple subissues, allowing the newspaper to apply an episodic style, help the British paper to fulfill its role as watchful commentator and protector of British interests in the European arena.
Consequently, we are led to conclude that behind the debate of the Euro are far deeper concerns in the UK about an integrated Europe, in which the country only plays a minor or equal role to every other member. In particular the British media (or, at least, the publishers of the major news vehicles) seem to be conservative and isolationist and are willing to engage any domestic government that favors European issues in a debate. An article on the Euro debate in the Times from 12/18/98 is even headlined "Gloves come off for biggest press scrap of the century" and discusses Prime Minister Tony Blair's fight with the Eurosceptic news editors. Furthermore, the British media - as illustrated above - are looking at many more subissues of the Euro debate and conclude the impact of a currency change on many of those as detrimental to the country's welfare.
We do admit that our research looked at only two of the fifteen member countries of the European Union. It is possible to assume that in pro-Euro countries a more lively debate over the Euro is in place than in Germany, or a less detrimental media position in other Euro-hold-out countries, such as Denmark and Greece. This is obviously a limitation of the study. It is also possible to assume that the chosen newspapers are in ownership situations that led to the results here. Given the fact though that these two newspapers have a certain reputation to uphold and that the issue, while politically a hotbed, does not impact the two papers' organizations as such that much, we are confident that the data are generalizable to the countries' media. Also, despite the fact that the two countries settled on different sides of the Euro debate, they are not only both members of the EU, but also part of the family of countries which respect the freedom of the press. This will largely guarantee a
n equal freedom of the newspapers to report independently on the Euro debate.
Conclusions
General conclusions for mass communication research should be that the source-to-media influence flow is not as clear as may be assumed. It seems that, depending on the issue and the media's position toward it, media sources and the media themselves can promote different positions of the same issue, making the idea of agenda setting oftentimes a "two-way street" altogether. Second, the findings support the conclusion of Saideman (1994) that politicians are not only influenced by other states and international organizations but as well by domestic interests, which in conclusion makes agenda-setting a highly iterative process.
The findings also support the 'gatekeeper model' of the media, as well as the study by Whitney and Becker (1982), which asserted that international news is not uncritically accepted by national media. It seems in particular intriguing that the aforementioned multiple gatekeepers due to the use of wire houses seems to apply little in a country such as the UK. It seems rather clear that the national newspaper editors are just cherry-picking factual news developments to then embed them in a nationally biased commentary piece. Germany on the other hand seems more prone to download the wire services news piece without changes. Overall, it would make for an interesting follow-up research to shed further light onto the use of wire service articles in the different countries.
The gatekeeper role is furthermore augmented here to the point that media can go beyond filtering information but add to it and generate their own. Furthermore, we can't assume that because an issue is international in scope, every country's media will have set the same agenda toward this issue. International agenda-setting will need to specifically put into consideration the culture and environment the research is done in. We speculate that it will be helpful to mirror to some extent the efforts of cross-cultural advertising and mass persuasion. Cultural models, such as the ones by Hofstede (1992) and de Mooji (1998) could be helpful, understanding a culture and, in the wake, understanding the operation of media within this culture. Granted that this is not at the heart of agenda-setting research, it could nevertheless be helpful to explain why international agenda-setting effects seem inconclusive to date.
Overall, the findings point to the fruitfulness of including story frames (news style) and media position in the agenda-setting process, in particular for international or cross-cultural aspects of it. We suspect that specifically second level research would benefit from looking at the news frames, given that they have an influence on what subissues are covered and how they are covered. There seems to be, in general, an interesting relationship between media position, sources' position, news frame styles, subissues and issue effect.
In addition, these findings suggest the need to examine the media-to-public effects, or the original agenda-setting hypothesis, based on these assumptions. This study found that there were differences between nations and between news frames in how the media position a message and comment on it. While preliminary findings do not deny the continued workings of the agenda-setting hypothesis, i.e. the media do set the agenda for the public in both of the studied countries, the notion that the media and their sources disagree on an agenda as well as the notion that some stories can give individuals different emotional and rational cues about an issue deserve further attention.

 Table 1: Comparison of source position in two newspapers
Times of London
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Pro-Euro
63
27
38.2%
24.1%
Neutral
44
75
26.7%
67.0%
Anti-Euro
58
10
35.2%
8.9%
Total
165
112


Chi-Square = 47.973, p< .001
Note: Top line cells are raw score and second line is column percentage
 Table 2: Comparison of position of quoted sources and media position
Media Position
Pro-Euro
Neutral
Anti-Euro
Position of
Pro-Euro
12
41
10
Source
85.7%
40.2%
20.4%
The
Neutral
1
40
3
Times of
7.1%
39.2%
6.1%
London
Anti-Euro
1
21
36
7.1%
20.6%
73.5%
Total
14
102
49
Position of
Pro-Euro
10
17
Source
90.9%
18.1%
Frankf.
Neutral
1
74
Allgem.
9.1%
78.7%
Zeitung
Anti-Euro
3
7
3.2%
100.0%
Total
11
94
7


Chi-Square (Times) = 57.973, p< .001,
Chi-Square (F.A.Z.) = 105.066, p< .001
Note: Top line cells are raw score and second line is column percentage.

Table 3: Comparison of news style and media position in the two newspapers

Media Position
Pro-Euro
Neutral
Anti-Euro
News Style
Hard
36
217
61
News
11.5%
69.1%
19.4%
The
Feature
4
48
26
Times of
Story
5.1%
61.5%
33.3%
London
Comment
18
54
115
9.6%
28.9%
61.5%
Total
58
319
202
News Style
Hard
18
242
6
News
6.8%
91.0%
2.3%
Frankf.
Feature
1
12
10
Allgem.
Story
4.3%
52.2%
43.5%
Zeitung
Comment
19
41
2
30.6%
66.1%
3.2%
Total
38
295
18
Chi-Square (Times) = 97.178, p< .001
Chi-Square (F.A.Z.) = 104.783, p< .001
Chi-Square (Times vs. F.A.Z. News) = 48.87, p< .001
Chi-Square (Times vs. F.A.Z. Features) = 0.80, p< .67
Chi-Square (Times vs. F.A.Z. Comment) = 64.43, p< .001
Note: Top line cells are raw score and second line is row percentage.
News Style
Source
Subissues
Hard News
Feature Story
Comment
Total
Economic
83
12
45
140
27.9 %
20.0 %
26.8 %
26.6 %
The
Social
20
6
9
35
Times of
6.7 %
10.0 %
5.4 %
6.7  %
London
Tax
13
2
11
26
4.4 %
3.3 %
6.5 %
4.9 %
Financial
128
10
37
175
43.0 %
16.7 %
22.0 %
33.3 %
Cultural
50
20
61
131
16.8 %
33.3 %
36.3 %
24.9 %
Personal
4
10
5
19
1.3 %
16.7 %
3.0 %
3.6 %
Total
298
60
168
526
Economic
36
10
46
13.7 %
16.1 %
13.3 %
Frankf.
Social
6
6
Allgem.
2.3 %
1.7 %
Zeitung
Tax
3
3
1.1 %
0.9 %
Financial
175
3
3
181
66.5 %
13.6 %
4.8 %
52.2 %
Cultural
22
3
49
74
8.4 %
13.6 %
79.0 %
21.3 %
Personal
21
16
37
8.0 %
72.7 %
10.7 %
Total
263
22
62
347
 Table 4: Comparison of subissues and news style by newspaper

Chi-Square (Times) = 74.878, p< .001, Chi-Square (F.A.Z.) = 255.512, p< .001,
Chi-Square (Times vs. F.A.Z. totals) = 15.76, p< .01
Note: Top line cells are raw score and second line is column percentage.
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