Comparing News Diets, Electoral Choices and EU Attitudes in Germany, Italy and the UK in the 2014 European Parliament Election

Based on three original post-electoral surveys held after the 2014 European elections on representative samples of citizens with internet access in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom we explore the relationship between the exposure to different sources of information and attitudinal and behavioural dimensions of Euroscepticism. We distinguish respondents according to their news diets: occasional media users, prevalently traditional (frequent users of TV and newspapers), prevalently digital (frequent users of internet and/or social network), and “omnivores”. We expect to find a relation between different news diets and confidence in EU institutions, electoral abstention, and vote for Eurosceptic parties. In fact, the 2014 EU electoral campaigns in the three countries demonstrated the presence of relatively strong Eurosceptic parties, such as “Alternative für Deutschland” in Germany, the “Movimento 5 Stelle” in Italy, and the “United Kingdom Independence Party” in the UK. Our analyses show that omnivores are more trustful of the EU and less likely to abstain, and that digital univores are more likely to vote for Eurosceptic parties. The analysis also shows that differences are not limited to different media outlets as domestic peculiarities matter, too. Consistently with long-term cultural differences, the same type of medium provides different images of the EU in diverse countries. As such, traditional univores are associated with more trust in Italy where traditional media have been fund more supportive of the EU, less so in Germany where such media comparatively provide mild criticism of the EU, and none in the UK where they present the highest share of Eurosceptic claims.