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"The personalization of politics, whereby politicians increasingly become the main focus of political processes, is a prominent phenomenon in modern democracies that has received considerable scholarly attention in national politics. However, little is known about the scope, causes and consequences of personalization in European Union politics, although recent institutional and political developments suggest that such a trend is underway. This book sheds light onto this phenomenon by taking a comprehensive approach to understanding four key dimensions of personalization concerning institutions, media, politics, and citizens. In doing so, it relies on an innovative longitudinal and cross-country comparative research design and applies multiple methods. It argues that institutional personalization is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for media to increasingly report about individual politicians. It shows that media personalization fluctuates across country and over time, while Members of the European Parliament increasingly engage in personalized legislative and communicative behaviour. These developments are conditional upon domestic media and electoral systems and have limited effects on citizen attitudes and political awareness. The book concludes that as additional political actors gain formal individual responsibilities, European Union politics also becomes more complex to disentangle. Ultimately, institutions provide more effective cues than individual politicians both for media to inform citizens about European Union politics and for the latter to acquire useful information in order to understand and evaluate European Union politics. These findings have important implications for the future of personalized politics in the European Union"--

The personalization of politics is a popular thesis but often challenged when it comes to media personalization. While previous research compared the prominence of different types of political actors across national political contexts, this article situates its research in the context of European Union (EU) politics and, thereby, studies similar reference points across countries. Its focus lies on the European Commission and its members. Personalization is conceptualized as individualization and presidentialization, respectively. The article proposes that the EU integration process provides journalists with the opportunity to report more often about individual politicians, while political developments should further incentivize journalists to personalize their news from Brussels. To test this argument, the article investigates personalization patterns in seven broadsheets from Ireland, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, and Poland. In total, 119,070 articles are analyzed by automated content analysis over a period of twenty-five years. The article finds no pan-European trend toward greater personalization of politics with respect to news coverage of EU executive politics. The findings nonetheless provide important implications for future research. The article particularly discusses the universal applicability of the phenomenon, the time frame for analysis, and journalistic styles in covering European politics.

The personalization of politics is a popular thesis but often challenged when it comes to media personalization. While previous research compared the prominence of different types of political actors across national political contexts, this article situates its research in the context of European Union (EU) politics and, thereby, studies similar reference points across countries. Its focus lies on the European Commission and its members. Personalization is conceptualized as individualization and presidentialization, respectively. The article proposes that the EU integration process provides journalists with the opportunity to report more often about individual politicians, while political developments should further incentivize journalists to personalize their news from Brussels. To test this argument, the article investigates personalization patterns in seven broadsheets from Ireland, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, and Poland. In total, 119,070 articles are analyzed by automated content analysis over a period of twenty-five years. The article finds no pan-European trend toward greater personalization of politics with respect to news coverage of EU executive politics. The findings nonetheless provide important implications for future research. The article particularly discusses the universal applicability of the phenomenon, the time frame for analysis, and journalistic styles in covering European politics.

Few political communication studies deal with the European Parliament during non-election times even though it takes decisions in a wide range of policy areas. This study examines the patterns and external drivers of European Parliament broadsheet coverage by analysing 2155 articles from six European Union countries during a routine period (2005–2007). Generally, it finds that the European Parliament receives regular coverage. However, developments in the domestic context also influence European Parliament news coverage. Public support for the European Union increases the number of reports about the European Parliament. While national elections do not compromise its news coverage, higher levels of party political contestation over the European Union and trust towards the national parliament lead to lower coverage. The implications are discussed with reference to the European Parliament's democratic legitimacy.

This article investigates the impact of pan-European candidates in European Parliament election campaigns. It focusses on the two 2019 nominees for the European Greens, who were Dutch and German, respectively. We conducted a pre-registered experiment in the Netherlands and Germany in early April 2019 to test the effects of (non-)personalized campaign posters on (a) turnout intention and (b) vote intention for the Greens alongside possible mediating effects of campaign and candidate evaluations. Our results suggest that while personalized campaigns as opposed to non-personalized campaigns may not matter per se for turnout and vote intention, individual candidates can make a difference in European elections, particularly with respect to vote intention. As such, the results have important implications for our understanding of European Parliament election campaigns.

What is the effect of politicisation on EU representation? We empirically test two competing views through a focus on party-voter congruence, i.e. whether parties share the policy preferences of their voters. The first perspective expects that the process of politicisation –either through party or media contestation– would improve party-voter agreement. The second perspective argues that politicisation has not improved the supply of partisan debate with parties still not offering satisfactory options to voters who are primarily driven by protest-based considerations; and as such does not expect an effect. We analyse congruence on the left-right and pro-anti-EU dimensions, capturing questions related to EU policy and polity, respectively. Our examination of four European Parliament elections (1999-2014) and 341 parties across 53 electoral contexts points to the limited effect of politicisation upon representation. Our findings have significant implications for the study of EU politicisation and representation and open up avenues for future research.