De beeldvorming van Duitsland in de Franse pers tijdens de eurocrisis

Abstract

During the euro crisis, France and Germany played a highly important and visible role. Since the spring of 2010, the beginning of the Greek crisis, the importance of Germany to the European Union has become remarkably clear. German participation was indispensable for Greek rescue. However, during the spring of 2010, it became apparent that the traditional alliance of France and Germany, long the engine of European integration, was weakening. Differences in leadership style and political culture have made bilateral leadership arduous. In that context, we examine in this thesis the way two French newspapers report on Germany during two periods of the crisis. The first period runs from December 2009 until July 2010. The second covers June 2011 until January 2012. The newspapers concerned are Le Monde and Le Figaro. In the newspaper articles we looked for frames of Germany. Journalists, consciously or unconsciously, use frames to encourages certain interpretations of reality and discourage others. Ten frames of Germany were found in the articles: selfish German ants, rigorous paterfamilias, difficult marriage, French-German engine for the eurozone, hesitant crisis manager, Merkel struggles with internal problems, Germany is pro-European savior, reluctant moneylender, guilty exporter and harsh negotiator. The results indicated that in both newspapers negative frames about Germany were dominant. However, Le Figaro more frequently used positive frames like pro-European savior and the French-Germany engine while Le Monde on the other hand, used more critical frames of Germany.

Keywords: Germany, France, eurocrisis, European politics, framing