Researching MediaSpace in a European cross-border region: The meaning of places and the function of borders

1 Introduction

The mass media are often viewed as key actors among those intervening in the European integration process (Fossum and Trenz, 2006; Trenz, 2008). Their representation of the European Union in general has been considered as eroding its legitimacy. The European agenda-setting has been defined by nationally oriented mass media, the current infotainment trend, and the tendency to cover only negative news associated with the EU are viewed as key reasons for the rather pessimistic vision of this political construction delivered to the citizens of the continent (Galpin and Trenz, 2017; Meyer, 2005; Urbániková and Volek, 2014). European affairs coverage has been analyzed in the national quality press as well as the more popular media, even if the former has received greater interest from the scholarly community (Kevin, 2003; Papathanassopoulos and Negrine, 2011). Further, the media can also represent—directly or indirectly—spatial phenomena determined by political rescaling at the European level, the emergence of collective actions and procedures that go beyond nation-states, and the consequent transformation of policymaking within nation states (Olsen, 2002).

However, the mass media representation of one specific regional construction strongly shaped by EU policies is relatively unknown: cross-border urban regions. The current article explores the representation of this type of regional space to establish whether the relevant media coverage portrays mainly a functional integration determined by the EU-inspired new regionalism promoted in borderlands: a de-bordered space structured by interconnected economic poles generating specific functions and leading to the emergence of strong urban centers and peripheries across state borders. The trans-frontier area organized by the dynamic economy of Luxembourg has been chosen as a case study. Following a review of literature on the EU regional imperatives and their potential relation to the news agenda in Europe borderlands, the research argument and methodology are presented. The results and a discussion are then developed in consecutive sections. First, we analyze the cross-border collaboration between the chosen media and their represented hierarchy of urban places in the trans-frontier region to find out if these journalistic activities explicitly refer to the de-bordered and center-periphery functional dynamics related to new regional EU policies. Second, the objective is to qualify the newsworthiness of this cross-border region by analyzing the issues addressed and their location in actual space. The last part is dedicated to a discussion of the structuring spatial factors which play a part in the construction of mass-mediated space at the level of this cross-border and urban area, with a focus on the value given to places and borders by the chosen media.

2 Spatial integration and representation beyond borders: EU regional priorities and MediaSpace

Spatial integration across state borders in Europe is linked to implementation of the EU regulations, cross-state partnerships, and policy coordination (Dühr, Stead, and Zonneveld, 2007; Durand and Lamour, 2014; Lamour and Decoville, 2014; Stead, 2012). The purpose of these policies has been to encourage the mobility of people, goods, capital, and services across state borders in order to support Europe’s competitiveness in a globalized economy (Jensen and Richardson, 2004; Moisio, 2011; Richardson, 2006). The metropolitan spaces across state borders, in particular, have held the attention of EU policymakers (ESPON, 2010). The spatial integration favored in these areas by European public authorities is associated with a new regionalism (Brenner, 2009; Keating, 1998, 2013). These cross-border spaces are conceived as new regional entities, including borders to be transformed into a spatial interface and a series of urban places expected to connect with one another in order to secure their common economic development (Deas and Lord, 2006; Lamour, 2011, 2014a; Luukkonen, 2015;). These regional units are expected to be managed by multi-level governance networks (Brenner, 2009; Hooghe and Marks, 2003; Keating, 1998, 2013). The implementation of new regional policies leads to the progressive constitution of an in-between European space, with its urban centers and peripheries determined by the economic organization of space.

The media plays a role in the definition of space, notably by fixing spatial representations used by people to shape their social space in their everyday lives (Burgess, 1990; Burgess and Gold, 1985; Lamour, 2019a; Lamour and Lorentz, 2016). That “stabilizes the existing central place orientations and ties in with living spaces through spatially selective information” (Blotevogel, 1984, p. 79). However, there has not been a strong interest in the media representation of the cross-border urban integration favored by EU policies and leading to trans-frontier central place orientations. The Copenhagen-Malmö region across the Danish and Swedish state border is one of the rare areas where investigations have been carried out (Falkheimer, Blach-Ørsten, Eberholst, and Möllerström, 2016). As suggested by Slaatta (2006), we can expect the European representation of issues by national and state-bordered mass media to be from a national angle because of their long-term interactions with other institutions within a nation-state. Nevertheless, as Slaatta also rightly adds, the mass media are themselves “structured according to political and economic structures in society, and are consciously or unconsciously participating in the constant negotiation and contestation of what kind of Europe we might be asked to imagine” (2006, p. 21). At the heart of the mass-mediated representation of European regions lies the “MediaSpace” (Couldry and McCarthy, 2004, p. 1) within which reporters determine their agenda, that is, “the kinds of space created by media and the effects that existing spatial arrangements have on media forms as they materialize in everyday life” (2004, p. 2). These influential spatial arrangements are located in the lifeworld of news producers and consumers. As suggested by Gasher (2015), the economic spatial factors constraining the news producers, such as the space of circulation and advertising, cannot explain the news coverage established by news organizations. Other parameters related to the material/digital globalization of flows and the emergence of an increasingly mobile society are instrumental determinants leading to a specific representation of space. Research related to the new mobility paradigm shows that there is “a complex ‘relationality’ of place and persons connected through performance” (Urry and Sheller, 2006, p. 214). Mobility within and across bounded places is one of the key criteria helping to define an increasing number of today’s places (Agnew, 2011; Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Linchuan Qiu, and Sey, 2007; Lamour and Lorentz 2019a, 2019b). The media cannot ignore this phenomenon. The increased mobility is not responsible for the disappearance of spatial borders, but it can lead to a more selective process of bordering by specific stakeholders (such as reporters) located on specific spatial scales (Paasi, 2009a; Rumford, 2006). The mass media is thought of as an institution influenced by, and involved in, the production of state-bordered spaces and places while producing news associated with nations (Billig, 1995). However, the mass media located in the borderlands of Europe can present a more European and relational vision of places depending on the regional context (Grieves, 2013; Lamour, 2014b; Lamour and Lorentz, 2016).

The impact of people’s mobility on the news coverage of space in Europe can be especially important at the scale of borderland areas, which have experienced a radical transformation, particularly due to the implementation of the Maastricht and Schengen Treaties and the consecutive liberation of flows between a series of places mainly for economic purposes. These areas can be viewed as hybrid European “soft spaces” (Allmendinger, Chilla, and Silker, 2014, p. 2704), meaning that they are relational zones determined by cross-border mobility rather than institutional boundaries. Does this mean, however, that the mass media located in these contexts simply portray this cross-border and regional space experienced by a proportion of the residents and determined by the ‘new regional’ imperatives of the EU? What can the media coverage of these cross-border regional areas tell us about the spatial arrangements structuring the MediaSpace at this localized and urban European scale?

3 Argument and methodology

It is argued that the economic and functional integration boosted by European policies within cross-border metropolitan areas is taken into consideration in the news coverage of media located in this specific context. To paraphrase Slaatta (2006, p. 21), the media is “consciously or unconsciously participating in the constant negotiation and contestation of what kind of Europe we might be asked to imagine” in cross-border areas. However, this integration determined by the new regional agenda and implicit of European economic centralities and peripheries is not necessarily the structuring spatial arrangement of “MediaSpace” (Couldry and McCarthy, 2004) in this context. The media’s investment in cross-border news reporting, the represented hierarchy of urban places across state borders, and the newsworthiness associated with the places constituting this urban hierarchy can reveal the existence of other spatial arrangements, and more precisely the co-existence of different meanings associated with places and borders within trans-frontier regions.

The methodology is based on a qualitative content analysis of all news articles with a cross-border dimension produced by two borderland newspapers during a period of three consecutive weeks. It has been common to consider one week on a yearly basis in order to comprehend the long-term representation of issues in the mass media (Lund, 2001). The period was extended to three weeks in the current research to prevent biased results related to the potential existence of events that monopolize the news agenda during many consecutive days. Three types of relevant information are encoded for each article in an Access database: first, meta-level information characterizing each published story (names of reporters, size of articles, reproduction of articles published on the other side of the border); second, places mentioned in each piece of news and located in Luxembourg or Lorraine; third, the key topic at the center of each article (Economics, e. g., business, job creation; Mobility, e. g., the public transport strategies; Social issues, e. g., health, education; Politics, exclusively news about party politics, elections, debates in political assemblies and sovereign power organization such as the justice and police systems; Sundries, e. g., crimes, accidents; Culture, e. g., concerts, leisure and tourism; Sport, e. g., professional competition, amateur sport; Other, e. g., environmental issues, housing development). Finally, information related to the identity of the chosen mass media is collected in the literature dedicated to them. This third type of information is used to understand the choices the media make concerning the spatial representation of the selected cross-border region.

The research is based on an analysis of the cross-border metropolitan region centered around the small state of Luxembourg. The booming economy of the Grand Duchy affects the neighboring regions of France (Lorraine), Belgium (Wallonia), and Germany (Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate) in terms of jobs and spatial development (Figure 1). Luxembourg employed 175,000 cross-border workers in 2017, half of whom came from Lorraine (STATEC, 2018). The agglomeration of Luxembourg City concentrates the vast majority of these jobs, which greatly benefit employees living in the neighboring countries. The city itself claims 40 % of all positions located in the Grand Duchy while only representing 18 % of the population of Luxembourg (MDDI, 2012). The cross-border functional area centered on Luxembourg City exists because of Maastricht and Schengen treaties―in conjunction with differentiated competitive state policies (e. g., employment and business taxes), and a series of cross-border multilevel governance policies aimed at facilitating trans-frontier flows. This leads to the progressive building-up of a functional Greater Luxembourg comprising economic centralities based in the Grand Duchy and residential peripheries for cross-border commuters located in Belgium, France, and Germany; public stakeholders based in Luxembourg play a central role in the multi-level governance by facilitating cross-border flows of these commuters (Decoville and Sohn, 2012).

Figure 1:

The trans-frontier metropolis centered around Luxembourg

Two daily newspapers are considered within this cross-border urban area. One in Luxembourg (Le Quotidien) and one in Lorraine (Le Républicain Lorrain). They share the same type of readership in terms of age (mature active people and pensioners) and social class (middle class and the regional elite). The main difference concerns nationality. Le Quotidien attracts a mix of nationalities based in the Grand Duchy while Le Républicain Lorrain targets the more nationally homogenous group of French people based in Lorraine. Cross-border workers based in France and working in Luxembourg are partly integrated into the readership of Le Republicain Lorrain but less so in that of Le Quotidien. The readership of the two newspapers is different in terms of size: 94,000 readers for Le Républicain Lorrain and 25,000 for Le Quotidien in 2018. However, the circulation area of the two newspapers also differs. Le Républicain Lorrain is diffused in a French region containing more than 2.3 million inhabitants, while Le Quotidien find its readership among a population of 600,000 people based in the Grand Duchy. The choice of these two dailies has been made for the following reasons. First, Lorraine and Luxembourg are the two parts of the urban region which are most affected by the cross-border functional integration. The majority of cross-border workers employed in the Grand Duchy reside in Lorraine, and Luxembourg is by far the main destination for trans-frontier commuters’ flows. There is also a long-term urban continuum between the southern part of Luxembourg and the northern part of Lorraine. Second, both newspapers share cultural aspects. They are edited in French, the lingua franca for most of the cross-border area. They also target a broad public and, as a print medium, they can offer the largest amount of news compared to radio and television. Third, Le Quotidien is diffused mostly in the southern part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg whereas Le Républicain Lorrain’s stronghold is in the northern part of the French region, that is, in the area characterized by a certain cross-border urban continuum. Finally, 50 % of the capital of Le Quotidien belongs to the publishing company of Le Républicain Lorrain. This shared economic capital implies that both newsrooms can use and publish articles produced by their neighboring daily for their respective publics. Articles of both print newspapers (in pdf-format) that have a border/cross-border dimension (mediation of issues exclusively concerning the neighboring area or either side of the border) have been encoded over a similar three week period between January and February 2017^[1]. The name of municipalities located in Luxembourg and in Lorraine, and sub-regional divisions of the two areas (French Departments and small regions in Luxembourg) were cross-searched in the pdf-pages of the print dailies in order to isolate articles. For two reasons the websites of the newspapers were not searched. First, the print dailies offer a higher density of news than their websites. Second, the articles found on the websites are also presented in the print version. Other digital information mediated by social media is not used in the current research because the objective is to focus on the spatial representation of mass media. In total, 311 articles were encoded (146 articles in Le Quotidien and 165 articles in Le Républicain Lorrain). It is a relatively dense representation of the cross-border area compared to other trans-frontier regions. For instance, an overall average of 40 articles per newspaper over a three-week period has been encoded in journals identified as covering the Öresund region linking Copenhagen and Malmö between Denmark and Sweden (Falkeimer et al., 2016).

4 Representing a Greater Luxembourg? A focus on the French outskirts

The analysis of articles produced by the newspapers reveals two parallel metropolitan representations, the particularity of which is to put greater emphasis on the functional periphery than on the center of the cross-border region powered by the economy of Luxembourg. The current transformation of the area under the new regional process encouraged by European policies―that is, a state de-bordering and a regional construction determined by economic imperatives (Deas and Lord, 2006; Lamour, 2011, 2014a; Luukkonen, 2015) has been reported on by both media. However, it is not the exclusive reporting proposed by journalists. News not connected to the current economic de-bordering promoted by the EU also has a strong presence. The centrality of peripheral Lorraine in the media coverage and the relative importance of news not related to the current economic restructuring of space can only be explained by the spatial arrangements structuring the MediaSpace of the two connected newspapers. This section of the current article is dedicated to two points of analysis. First, we investigate the two newspapers’ journalistic investment and urban focus in the cross-border region. Second, the newsworthiness of the urban places within this region is researched. These two complementary analyses are used in the following part to understand the value given to ‘places’ and ‘borders’ by the two mass media outlets in this cross-border context.

The metropolitan region approached from the outskirts and peripheral issues

Both newspapers address a large variety of themes (Figure 3). First, articles centered on ‘politics’ understood as elections, political-party activity, debates in parliamentary assemblies and the coordination of sovereign power, such as the organization of the justice and police systems, represent a truly small proportion of information. This is especially true for Le Quotidien. This limited representation tends to show that the construction of the trans-frontier metropolis is not determined by local government powers but by multi-level governance networks sharing a series of skills to address specific issues (Brenner, 2009; Hooghe and Marks, 2003; Keating, 1998, 2013). Secondly, it is possible to visualize the structural dynamics of the trans-frontier urban region by means of a detailed approach to articles on economic, mobility, and sundry matters, which constitute the relative or absolute majority of news.

Figure 2:

Mass-mediated municipalities in the Luxembourg-Lorraine cross-border area (focus).

Figure 3:

Thematic repartition of articles in both newspapers.

Reading note: 34 % of news is related to sundries in Le Quotidien.

Number of articles per newspaper: Le Républicain Lorrain (165) – Le Quotidien (145).

The transversal issue in these three topics is the definition of a sustainable and de-bordered space for daily cross-border commuters and the progressive specialization of cross-border space structured by material networks facilitating these flows. This involves the representation of a relational space made of interconnected places characteristic of the EU integration (Allmendinger et al., 2014). The key actors presented in these articles are public and private agencies implementing/addressing the European vision of cross-border ‘new regionalism’ (Brenner, 2009; Keating, 1998) but also members of the public that experience it. It is possible to distinguish three types of information: functional, strategic and innovative. The functional information is about everyday life in the trans-frontier region related to the center-periphery economic organization of space in Greater Luxembourg (Decoville and Sohn, 2012). The newspapers mediate the continued risk that Lorraine (Dedola, 2017) will deindustrialize, the France-based economic stakeholders whose start-up companies are related to dynamic Luxembourg (Correia, 2017), and the traffic jams, car-related pollution problems and accidents on the main transport networks leading to the Grand Duchy’s economic poles. Strategic information is more centered on the public agency debates linking attempts on both sides of the border to define efficient mobility strategies or to get rid of structural bottlenecks. It describes the agenda of the stakeholders involved in the multi-level governance generally associated with new regionalism and cross-border regions (Brenner, 2009; Durand and Lamour, 2014; Hooghe and Marks, 2003; Keating, 1998, 2013; Lamour and Decoville, 2014). This information also tends to be from the perspective of Lorraine, with political actors from that side of the border, for instance, the French urban agency Agape (Nonet, 2017) taking the initiative. Finally, innovative news puts focus on future modes of transport, such as locally produced electric cars, that serve directly or indirectly to enable a sustainable and de-bordered space as expected by EU authorities (Jensen and Richardson, 2004; Moisio, 2011; Richardson, 2006) (Chaty, 2017). All news in this ‘serious’ agenda (in contrast to sport and leisure activities) tends to show that Luxembourg City is the most central location. This urban magnet is among the most-mentioned places. It is also a place whose connectivity issues are most highlighted. ‘Mobility’ articles form the majority associated with this urban pole, and the other main Luxembourg municipalities which were reported on and traversed daily by French workers to reach Luxembourg City. The second topic most often associated with these municipalities, ‘Sundries’, also contains other transport-related information such as car/train incidents and traffic congestion (Figure 4).

Figure 4:

Topics in the four most-mentioned municipalities in Luxembourg.

Reading note: 34 % of articles mentioning Luxembourg City are about mobility issues.

Number of articles mentioning the municipalities: Luxembourg (62), Esch (21), Bettembourg (20), Dudelange (19).

Lorraine is also at the center of a less economy-driven representation of the cross-border region. First, it is an area where professional and amateur sports people from Luxembourg practice a series of sports as well as being a region in which sports(wo)men engaged in competitions in Luxembourg reside (Le Républicain Lorrain, 2017). There is a cross-border sporting space. The Grand Duchy is often mentioned in these articles, but most of the articles tend to focus on such events when they take place in Lorraine or, when the events are hosted in Luxembourg, but the sportsmen and women come from France. The capital city of this cross-border sporting space is Metz, especially its professional soccer team which plays in the French premier league and contains one or two Luxembourgish players in its team. This privileged place that Lorraine occupies is also found when cultural issues are presented.

Lorraine is also the part of the mass-mediated cross-border area where most of the crime stories occur. The difference between sport and culture is that Le Républicain Lorrain tends to mention criminal activities in Luxembourg only if there is a connection with Lorraine. Le Quotidien, on the other hand, is rather keen to represent malpractices occurring exclusively in Lorraine, plus the ones involving both countries. This different attitude of the two newspapers is not related to an absence of criminal activities in Luxembourg. In fact, Le Quotidien provides its readership with a large proportion of articles related to criminal affairs based only in the Grand Duchy. Other spatial factors are at the basis of this mediated differentiation and the overwhelming focus on what is happening in Lorraine.

5 News from a Greater Lorraine: Spatial parameters of a contextualized MediaSpace

The current case study helps us to explore the spatial arrangements that determine the representation of the cross-border area including Luxembourg and Lorraine. Reporters have to select newsworthy events related to specific places. The value of these place-located events depends on the spatial scale within which they are framed. The border also has a function in the definition of the representation. State boundaries connect or separate spatial objects involved in the production of news contents. It is possible to distinguish specific places, scalar framing, and (de)bordering conditions for each newspaper.

6 Conclusion: Mass-mediated places, borders and spatial performance/inheritance

The cross-border functional integration process that is taking place between Luxembourg and its neighboring areas is strongly dependent on European spatial policies, which have facilitated a series of flows across state limits. The mass media located in this cross-border context can represent this functional integration when it is meaningful for their readership. However, the spatial arrangements underlying their mass-mediated presentation of cross-border issues are not simply related to the current economic polarization of space by Luxembourg that is permitted by European policies. There is a series of other spatial frameworks within which reporters determine their professional work and news production (Lamour, 2017, 2018, 2019b). It is currently possible to distinguish a space of performance relatively opposed to a space of inheritance.

Research related to the new mobility paradigm has insisted on a “complex ‘relationality’ of place and persons connected through performance” (Urry and Sheller, 2006, p. 214). Mobility within and across boundaries associated with places is one of the key criteria helping to define an increasing number of today’s places (Agnew, 2011; Castells et al., 2007; Lamour and Lorentz 2019a, 2019b). The current analysis of Luxembourg and Lorraine shows that the mass mediation of places in European cross-border areas can be related to this type of ‘mobility’ performance but also to the presence of a bounded inheritance. The research tends to reveal that there can be a representational dichotomy around the center-periphery organization of space in a trans-frontier environment. The more peripheral French medium is given to represent places linked to the daily mobility of commuters at the cross-border scale whereas the more central medium in Luxembourg tends to report on places with respect to their static and bounded heritage such as their long-term fixed assets (e. g., professional sports teams) and problems (e. g., crimes). It shows that the state border is not always the separating line responsible for a process of internal homogenization versus an external differentiation (Paasi, 1998) but a limit from which different characteristics of European places are selected and mediated. Some complementary research will be needed to find out how the readers of Le Républicain Lorrain and Le Quotidien use the localized European news to structure their opinions and their daily routines in space. The role of the mass media as an element of European public spheres in the borderlands of Europe depends on what the readership says and does in relation to these representations, as suggested by previous thinking on the influence of media in the social space (Burgess, 1990; Burgess and Gold, 1985; Lamour, 2019a; Lamour and Lorentz, 2016).