The Gravity of Foreign News Coverage in the EU: Does the Euro Matter?

This article investigates the systemic factors behind cross-country variability in transnational media coverage of foreign news in the EU in 2010. Using a large data set on the transnational coverage of news by 148 EU national media, the article maps the network of EU transnational citations and performs a quantitative assessment of their systemic determinants via the estimation of a gravity model of news. Nine empirical hypotheses are tested. Size and economic development of the target (source) country are positively (negatively) associated with the probability of coverage. Historical, linguistic and economic ties increase this probability. The evidence on the effect of the countries' participation in the currency union is weak: once the historical levels of trade integration and the effects of the sovereign debt crisis are accounted for, there is no robust evidence of a higher integration of the media spheres within the eurozone.