Communicating European Integration in the Age of the World Wars: Print Media Discourses on the Unity of Europe, 1914-1945

Abstract

This paper argues that the communication of European integration by the media did not begin with the European unification process after 1950. It draws upon a broad definition of the term “European integration” favoured by modern historiography, and in so doing shows that in the first half of the 20th century journalists communicated various notions of the unity of Europe to their readers. By linking media history and discourse analysis, the article examines three different facets of mediating European integration in German, British and American newspapers between 1914 and 1945. It traces “integrational thinking” in press coverage in three different sectors in particular, namely politics, economy and culture. Although discourses on continental unity were of course ambivalent and far from pointing straight towards European integration in the sense of a present-day European Union, they played an important role in the age of the World Wars. The article thus conceptualises a long-term historical perspective on communicating European integration.