ABSTRACT
Austerity has been a central issue in the discussions on how to implement public policies, both at a European and a national level, in response to the European sovereign debt crisis. There is an impression both in public opinion and the academic literature that this frame has been translated to the media coverage of the crisis in a very standardized and uniform way. This chapter examines whether this impression is correct or not, by studying the press coverage of the crisis in ten European countries, focusing on key news events related to the European sovereign debt crisis between February 2010 and July 2012. The study confirms that the austerity discourse has dominated the European press coverage on the short- and long-term solutions to the sovereign debt crisis. However, the chapter also shows that the concrete mix of economic policies, and the balance between austerity and growth frames, differs significantly between countries, between groups of countries with different economic circumstances (such as Northern and Southern Europe), and between newspapers with different editorial orientations.
