Euroopa Liidu käsitlemine Postimehes aastatel 2000-2004 ja avalik arvamus Euroopa Liiduga liitumise suhtes

Date

2007

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

After Estonia regained its independence in the year 1991, Estonia had a national goal, to insure its rather weak independence. It meant that Estonia needed to restore its historical links to the Europe and reintegrate itself with many international structures. From the beginning of the 1990s, Estonia´s foreign and detence priority has been to join with the NATO and the EU. The majority of Estonian people always have strongly supported joining the NATO, but what concerns the EU, the support has not always been so certain. The support to join the EU has been quite low. Majority of public polls have shown wheather sceptical or even negative attitudes towards the EU and towards joining the EU. It is mostely because the need to join the EU was not so clearly understandable to the public. Why Estonia has to make so much effort on the name of being a member of the EU. When talking about joining the EU, the main attention was concentrated on the questions concerning economic, security and social problems. People were foremost interested in what the EU-membership could give to Estonia – profit, aide, guaranties etc, or on the contrary, what Estonia may lose or give up because of the membership – independence, freedom of choice etc. Before the EU membership was gained, the support to the EU was one of the most lowest among the candidate countries. After Estonia became a member of the EU, the support was one of the highest. This is the moment when the role of the media as an information exchanger has been very high, if not to say it had a determinal or fatal role influencing the public opinion. How the EU issues were handled in the media depended very much on the inner factors, but also from the outside factors, like political crises, bureaucracy of the EU institutions, non ratification of the EU treaty etc. Behind very rapid change of public support to the EU, one can always see some great political events that were widely talked about in the media at that time. This has hade a direct influence to the change of public opinion concerning the support to the EU and to join the EU. Thus, the media can form the way people are thinking about issues, buy not only giving its opinions about the themes and problems but also by chosing the agenda, what the media will talk about, it is acctually influencing the public opinion. Behind every big change of public opinion, we can acctually see some media events. If the events have been positives the public opinion towards the EU has grown or vice versa, behind a rapid negative change, there was a negative media event. But the messages about the EU forwarded in media could not form the general opinion about the EU. The final conclusion of this work is that the media has not directly been able to form public opinion about the EU.

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd, ajakirjandus, trükiajakirjandus, päevalehed, avalik arvamus, avalikkus, Euroopa Liit, representatsioon

Citation