Priming Europe: Media Effects on Loyalty, Voice and Exit in European Parliament Elections

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.Parties in government face a decline in EP elections after experiencing a surge in votes to win the national election. This occurs because voters are more inclined to give voice to their dissatisfaction with current government performance by voting for the opposition or exiting because less is at stake in second‐order elections. These elections negatively affect the electoral fortunes of governing parties as voters opt to punish poorly performing national governments in EP elections. Meanwhile, greater reliance on the EU issue dimension in vote choice models is taken as evidence for the increasing Europeanisation of EP elections. We examine the role of the media in making the EU issue dimension salient in such a way that government parties may benefit electorally from this increased saliency. To examine whether visibility of government party actors in media coverage increases loyalty for the governing parties either directly or via priming the EU issues for voters, we combine survey data from the 2009 European Election Studies (EES) with data on news coverage of those elections that links the governing party to the EU issue. We show that where the government is visible in EU news coverage, EU issue voting tends to increase loyalty while decreasing the probability to vote for the opposition and thus improves the electoral prospects for governing parties. This is even more the case if the issue is primed by negative campaign coverage.Support for this research was provided by the Austrian Science Fund (S10902-G11)

Party contestation and Europe on the news agenda: the 2009 European Parliamentary elections

Publication based on research carried out in the framework of the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.The journal issue has been produced in the framework of the PIREDEU Project, one of the projects carried out by the EUDO Public Opinion Observatory.In this article we analyse the news coverage of the 2009 EP elections in all 27 EU member states (N = 52,009). We propose that the extent to which these second-order elections are salient to the media depends on political parties contesting the elections. Consistent with expectations, the findings suggest that the saliency of EP elections is increasing and that the degree of political contestation over Europe contributes to this development in a non-linear fashion so that only when contestation develops beyond a certain point, does media coverage increase.1. Introduction 2. Saliency of European elections and news media coverage 3. Party contestation and its effects on saliency of EU elections 4. Data and methods 5. Results 6. Discussion Reference

European Parliament Election Study, Longitudinal Media Study 1999, 2004, 2009

Media coverage of elections to the European Parliament. Topics: Newspapers: page number on which the article begins; type of newspaper article (e.g. report, interview, documentary, cartoon, etc.); beginning of the article on the top or bottom half of the page; television: length of the TV contribution; main topic of the report; actual and desired main person responsible in the main topic of the report (political actor within and outside the national government, non-political actor, EU or EU-related actor); place of action of the report; mainly affected geographical area; main actor (persons, groups, organisations); explicit assessment of the main actor; sex of the main actor; frequency of direct citation of the main actor; assessment of the EU; two or more aspects of a problem mentioned; conflicts or disagreements mentioned; personal attack between actors. Elections to the European Parliament and election campaign: report covers the elections to the European Parliament or the election campaign; opinion poll results mentioned; mention of actors as ´Gewinner´ or ´Verlierer´; mention of presentation type and style of the actor; report mentions a strategic step with a certain motivation; use of metaphors from the language of sport or the language of wars; election campaign to the European elections is described as boring or exciting; report mentions voter turnout in the European elections in the country; report mentions people´s interest in the election campaign or in the elections; report mentions aspects related to the role of the media in the election campaign (only in 2004); report mentions interviews with people on the street (vox populi). Additionally coded was: coder ID; name of the medium; publication date; country.Darstellung der Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament in den Medien. Themen: Zeitungen: Seitennummer, auf der der Artikel beginnt; Art des Zeitungsartikels (z.B. Reportage, Interview, Dokumentation, Karikatur usw.); Beginn des Artikels auf der oberen Hälfte oder auf der unteren Hälfte der Seite; Fernsehen: Länge des TV-Beitrags; Hauptthema des Beitrags; tatsächlicher und gewünschter Hauptverantwortlicher im Hauptthema des Beitrags (politischer Akteur innerhalb und außerhalb der nationalen Regierung, nicht politischer Akteur, EU oder EU-bezogener Akteur); Handlungsort des Beitrags; hauptsächlich betroffenes geographisches Gebiet; Hauptakteur (Personen, Gruppen, Organisationen); explizite Bewertung des Hauptakteurs; Geschlecht des Hauptakteurs; Häufigkeit, wie oft der Hauptakteur direkt zitiert wurde; Bewertung der EU; zwei oder mehr Seiten eines Problems erwähnt; Konflikte oder Meinungsverschiedenheiten erwähnt; persönlicher Angriff zwischen Akteuren. Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament und Wahlkampagne: Beitrag behandelt die Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament bzw. die Wahlkampagne; Meinungsumfrageergebnisse erwähnt; Erwähnung von Akteuren als ´Gewinner´ oder ´Verlierer´; Erwähnung von Präsentationsart und Stil des Akteurs; Beitrag erwähnt einen strategischen Schritt mit einer bestimmten Motivation; Verwendung von Metaphern aus der Sprache des Sports bzw. von Kriegen; Wahlkampagne zu den Europawahlen wird als langweilig oder spannend bezeichnet; Beitrag erwähnt die Wahlbeteiligung an den Europawahlen im Land; Beitrag erwähnt Interesse der Menschen an der Wahlkampagne oder an den Wahlen; Beitrag erwähnt Aspekte im Zusammenhang mit der Rolle der Medien in der Wahlkampagne (nur in 2004); Beitrag erwähnt Interviews von Personen auf der Straße (vox populi). Zusätzlich verkodet wurde: Coder-ID; Name des Mediums; Erscheinungsdatum; Land