Selecting the Articles for the Analysis

The data for empirical analysis consisted of articles from the opinion pages of Postimees dealing with the relationship between Estonia and the European Union during four years, 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2003. These four years were chosen for the analysis as certain highlights of the long accession process.

More concretely, 1997 was the year the EU decided to start accession negotiations with Estonia, in 1998 the negotiations were started and finished in 2002 and in 2003 Estonia organized a binding referendum about EU membership (for more detailed chronology of Estonian accession process see Chapter 1).

Since the decision to focus on the opinion pages was based on an assumption that each article reflected the views of the writer, some minor sections in Postimees that did not meet this criterion were excluded from the analysis. I left out the sections like Questionnaire (Küsitlus)⁴¹ and the Tough Word (Kõva sõna)⁴². Also the sections based either on the references to other Estonian papers (Teised lehed) or Russian Journalism (Venemaa ajakirjandus) were excluded from the analysis. Also omitted, from the data sets for 2002 and 2003 were anonymous internet commentaries, of which précis summaries were published in the section Letters to the Editor (Lugejakirjad).

41 Küsitlus is based on brief comments from readers referring to something that had appeared in Postimees or some other media.

42 Maybe defined as strong topical opinions that catch the audience’s attention to the extent they re-use the expression, phrase or wording. Popular re-tweeted hashtags on Twitter maybe viewed as the digital version of the Kõva sõna section in Postimees.

Even though selecting articles on the basis of the keywords might seem to be a mechanical task, the current study revealed something else. While John E. Richardson (2007, 18) writes about the possible obscurities and questions to be discussed in connection with interpreting articles, I was facing the same problems before the interpretation phase. Therefore, the starting points of naming, metonymy and neologisms, as Richardson (2007) suggests for interpreting the data were very useful during the selection process. At the same time these three can be seen as tools used in the discourse of Postimees for constructing social meanings and legitimizing group membership (Bishop and Jaworski 2003, 262).

When gathering the empirical data, I looked through all the opinion articles published during these four years that are available in the digital archive of Postimees. In this selection process, four key words were used to get as broad sample as possible: European Union (Euroopa Liit), EU (EU), Brussels (Brüssel) and Euro (euro). The initial two lie in Richardson’s (2007) naming category, Brussels is metonymic and Euro is neologic.

Since my aim is to analyze the relationship between Estonia and the European Union, I omitted articles that only mentioned Europe (Euroopa), Western Europe (Lääne-Euroopa) or West (Lääs) without any clear references to the EU. Especially in the beginning of the accession process,

‘Europe’ was also used as a synonym of the Council of Europe instead or in addition to the EU. For example, in connection with discussing the need to abandon the death penalty in September 1997, both organizations were referred to. The term, ‘West’, on the other hand, was often related to the transatlantic element represented by the USA and NATO.

However, the articles that included references to the European Union (EU) as well as ‘union’ or ‘Europe’ as synonyms of the EU were included. For instance, articles that spoke of ‘going to Europe’ after an initial discussion about the situation in the EU. Also articles to ‘Euro’+suffix, which clearly refer to the EU, were included.

The articles where EU member states or candidate countries were mentioned without referring to the European Union as a whole were omitted as were articles where the only reference was ‘in all European countries’, ‘in Europe’ and ‘in the developed European countries’ that could refer to the wider Western Europe. On the other hand, if the wording concerned ‘European Union countries/nations/member states’, those articles were included. Also the claim that Estonians are becoming European citizens (PM, 18.03.1998) refers to the EU, since citizenship is connected specifically to the EU, not Europe in general.

Richardson (2007, 18) suggests that it is as important to pay attention to metonymy and naming. Thus, the articles dealing with ‘Brussels’ and the EU institutions or their representatives as metonymical references to the EU were included. For example, the articles could refer to the President of the European Commission at the time, Romano Prodi, some other commissioners or Brussels in general. Also those articles that referred to certain EU programs

directed at Estonia as a candidate country were included (for example the Phare program).

On the other hand, the articles referring to Brussels as a city, not the representative of the EU, were excluded from the analysis (for example PM, 18.06.1998). Also the articles where a reference to the single currency Euro was made without any further reference to the European Union were left out of the analysis. The quantity of these articles was marginal and mostly related to discussions about the Estonian possibility to use Euro currency on the basis of Estonia’s decision only.

The most common way of making neologisms in the paper was using the prefix ‘Euro’. Each example was evaluated separately on the basis of whether or not the reference was made to the European Union. Again, I did not include those articles where ‘Euro’ was referring to a certain quality, e.g. “Euro prisons” (eurovanglate), “Euro shelters” (euroturvakodudel) (PM, 26.05.1998), “Euro renovation” (euroremonti) (PM, 31.07.1998) and “Euro skin” (eurokesta) (PM, 31.10.1997).

At the same time those numerous neologisms where the term ‘Euro’ was replacing European Union were included, for example “Euro Commission”

(eurokomisjoni) (PM, 28.06.1997) and “Euro Parliament” (Europarlament) (PM, 14.08.1997). The term “Euro race” (eurovõidujooksu) (PM, 24.07.1997b) referred to the stiff competition between the twelve candidate countries. Also the terms “Euro negotiations” (euroläbirääkimiste) (PM, 12.11.1997) instead of the negotiations with the EU, “Euro integration” (eurointegratsioonis) (PM, 26.05.1997) instead of integrating to the European Union, “Euro Union”

(Euroliit) (PM, 26.11.1997) instead of the European Union, as well as “Euro norms” (euronormidele) (PM, 28.07.1997), “Euro demand” (Euronõuet) (PM, 17.11.1997) and “Euro policy” (europoliitika) (PM, 27.05.1997) in connection with the accession negotiations appeared. I also included “Euro optimism”

(eurooptimism) (PM, 04.01.2003), “Euro process” (Europrotsess) (PM, 09.02.1998), “Euro debate” (eurodebatt) (PM, 12.11.2003) and “Eurosceptics”

(euroskeptikutele) (PM, 12.07.1997), “Euro support” (eurotoetus) and “Euro propaganda” (europropaganda) (PM, 02.06.1997) since all these were related to the European Union. Also for instance, “Euro corridors” (eurokoridoridest),

“Euro minded people” (euromeelsel rahval), “Euro desire” (euroihaluse) (PM, 12.07.1997), “Euro diagnosis” (Eurodiagnoos), “Euro road” (euroteelt) (PM, 24.07.1997a), “Euro train” (eurorongi), “Euro autumn” (Eurosügise) (PM, 05.09.1997), “Euro information” (euroinfo), “Euro discussion”

(Eurodiskussioon) (PM, 11.09.1997), “Euro door” (euroust) (PM, 22.10.1997) and “Euro fog” (euroudu) (PM, 13.11.1997) were included.

In the selected articles, aside from the EU, Estonia was always present in one way or another. I included those articles where the reference to ‘Estonian something/representative’ or ‘us’ as Estonia was made. On the other hand, I did not include the articles where Estonia was replaced by Baltic countries/nations, East European countries/nations or only candidate countries of the EU were mentioned. Also those few articles that focused on

the municipal or local level dealing with, for example, the development of a certain Estonian city, municipalities or local, not national us were excluded from the further analysis (see Section 2.4).

Only those parts of the articles where both Estonia and the EU were present were selected for the analysis. In some cases this could mean the whole article whereas for other articles, one paragraph was selected on the basis of the above mentioned key words. At the same time it should be noted that even though visually it is easy to notice where one paragraph ends and the other one starts, this does not make paragraphs objective and neutral categories, neither are they necessarily logical entities. In some cases, a particular paragraph contained several topics of which only a small proportion concerned the EU.

In other articles the same ideas and arguments continued across several paragraphs (even though the EU could have been mentioned in one of these only). Consequently, in order to understand the text, the preceding and following paragraphs were included in the analysis. This way mechanical categorization was replaced by distinct evaluations.

In sum, on the basis of the above criteria, the aggregate of articles selected 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2003 was 1780, of which 1543⁴³ of were analyzed (see Section 3.2). The more concrete division by years is shown in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1. Number of articles published and analyzed per year and in total.

Year 1997 1998 2002 2003 Total

Number of