| Abstract: |
By comparing European and US newspaper debates on the 2003 Iraq War, this
working paper empirically tests whether a European public sphere exists
regarding the contested issue of war and peace. This component of foreign and
security policy represents a hard case for the evolution of European
communication and looking for it empirically leads into nearly uncharted
territory, as most studies have not yet addressed this particular policy
field. The data set includes more than 400 articles from six respected
newspapers in Germany, Great Britain, and the US, which serve in this case as
a non-European control group. One interesting finding of the frame analysis is
the fact that one can identify a European community of communication that
relates to the legal dimension of the Iraq-debate and to discourses in two
European countries. Opinions related to the question whether or not the use of
military force complies with international law vary widely in all three
countries. However, in contrast to the discourse prevalent in the US, both the
German and the British discourses show a strong preference for upholding the
rule of international law. |