The State of Europeanisation: between Clash and Convergence. A comparison of the media coverage of the 2019 European Elections in seven countries

Abstract

The issue of the Europeanisation of national public spheres is a question as to how a discursive media space can be created within the EU. There are forces of convergence at work, such as networking within the borderless digital space. At the same time, there are counterforces: increasing nationalism and populists who identify ‘Brussels’ as a target for their criticism of elites. The vision of a European public sphere appears to share the same fate as the European project as such; as a result of years of crisis, optimism has given way to disillusion. Using coverage of the 2019 EU elections in seven European countries (a total of 57,943 articles from Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and the UK), we draw a picture of a heterogeneous EU public. What is particularly clear is that the phenomena of horizontal and vertical Europeanisation require more nuanced interpretations. While a high degree of horizontal Europeanisation indicates convergent and pro-European media coverage (as in the cases of Germany and Portugal), a high degree of vertical Europeanisation may indicate polarised publics or an unfree media landscape (as in the UK and Hungary). From a methodological point of view, the study shows that a combination of computational content analysis and international cooperation between scientists can advance research into the European public.

La “europeización” de las esferas públicas nacionales es una cuestión de crear un espacio mediático discursivo dentro de la UE. Hay fuerzas de convergencia, como redes en el espacio digital. Al mismo tiempo, hay fuerzas contrarias, un creciente nacionalismo y populistas que critican las élites a “Bruselas”. Aparentemente, la visión de una esfera pública europea comparte su suerte con el proyecto Europeo: después de años de crisis, el optimismo se convirtió en desilusión. Utilizando la cobertura mediática de las elecciones de la UE de 2019 en siete países europeos (57.943 artículos de Alemania, Hungría, Italia, Polonia, Portugal, la República Checa y el Reino Unido), dibujamos cuadro de un público heterogéneo de la UE. Resulta claramente que la europeización horizontal y vertical requieren interpretaciones diferenciadas. Un alto grado de europeización horizontal indica una cobertura mediática convergente y pro-europea (como Alemania o Portugal), un alto grado vertical puede indicar un público polarizado o un panorama mediático poco libre (como el Reino Unido o Hungría).