Everyone Ignores Europe? Party Campaigns and Media Coverage in the 2009 European Parliament Elections

The interplay between parties and media in putting EU issues on the agenda: A temporal pattern analysis of the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom

“…Brandenburg, 2002;Hopmann et al, 2012;Walgrave and Van Aelst, 2006), when it must be a major goal for parties to communicate positions to the electorate and for specific issues. Especially for EUrelated topics, media salience depends on political actors who actively communicate about Europe, give the EU a face, and attach relevance to it (Adam, 2007;Jalali and Silva, 2011;Schuck et al, 2011). Regarding parties' willingness to engage in public discourse about the EU, current research shows that a growing number of political parties seems to have an incentive to become active.…”

“…And especially European issues seem to require such input on side of the national parties as their remoteness and facelessness in general has only little news value for the media (e.g. Adam, 2007;Jalali and Silva, 2011). During the last years, research has made great progress in explaining the strategic EU-related communication efforts of different party types (e.g.…”

Who Drives the Agenda: Media or Parties? A Seven-Country Comparison in the Run-Up to the 2014 European Parliament Elections

“…Although a first study on specific EU issues indicates the relevance of the media in initiating debates (Maier et al 2017), we do not know who triggers attention to the EU in general and who dominates the interplay between the media and party agendas. From a theoretical perspective, it is reasonable to expect national parties to play an important role in European elections because (1) the EU itself needs national actors, that is, parties, to gain news value (De Vreese 2003; Jalali and Silva 2011; Machill et al 2006; Schuck and De Vreese 2011); and (2) the introduction of the “Spitzenkandidaten” for the presidency of the European Commission (van der Brug et al 2016) personalized the 2014 EP election and led to a party-driven rise in media attention (Schulze 2016). Consequently, we state in our first hypothesis:…”

“…The same agenda-setting mechanisms pursued by political parties and found in a national context could pertain, or even be more pronounced, in a European context for at least two reasons. First, since the EU on its own has little news value (Statham 2008), it needs to be promoted by political actors, such as parties or candidates, to be visible (Adam 2007;De Vreese 2003;Jalali and Silva 2011;Machill et al 2006;Schuck and De Vreese 2011). Second, the introduction of the "Spitzenkandidaten" for the presidency of the European Commission (Van der Brug et al 2016) personalized the 2014 EP election and led to a party-driven rise in media attention (Schulze 2016).…”

The 2014 European electoral manifestos a preliminary analysis of the main competition dimensions

“…This phenomenon is frequently seen in the media, thanks not only to editors and journalists but also the political actors involved in the campaigns 10 . The presence of European subjects in more visible political campaign materials, such as airtime or posters, is limited to the point that the expression «Europe-shaped hole» can be used to describe its content: in 2009, three quarters of the campaign materials prepared by the Portuguese political parties represented in the European Parliament addressed national matters 11 . In this case, there is a marked cleavage between governing and opposition parties, with the incumbent dedicating two thirds of their political communication material to European issues while the opposition parties tend to address Europe much less.…”