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
In: Party politics: an international journal for the study of political parties and political organizations, Band 25, Heft 2, S. 167-178
ISSN: 1460-3683
We investigate the interplay between party communication and media coverage in putting EU issues on the agenda during the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. A temporal pattern analysis focuses on the dynamic perspective of media–parties' interactions based on a quantitative content analysis of (a) the press releases published by parties and (b) the coverage of two leading newspapers per country 12 weeks prior to the elections. We find that most public discourses are started by the media; however, political parties especially in Austria are also quite successful in initiating discussions about EU issues. Interestingly, once an issue has been placed on the agenda, only a few parties take the opportunity of exploiting their issue-ownership in response to the media agenda. On the other side, media react to publications of all party types, even radical parties.