The Spitzenkandidaten in the European Parliament Election Campaign Coverage 2014 in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom
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Politics and Governance (ISSN: 2183-2463) 2016, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 23-36 Doi: 10.17645/pag.v4i1.457 Article The Spitzenkandidaten in the European Parliament Election Campaign Coverage 2014 in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom Heidi Schulze Department for Communication Research, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany; E-Mail: [email protected] Submitted: 30 September 2015 | Accepted: 18 January 2016 | Published: 29 February 2016 Abstract Elections to the European Parliament are characterised by a steady decline in voter turnout. To tackle this problem, in 2014, several groups of the European Parliament nominated pan-European Spitzenkandidaten who were expected to personalise the elections and mobilise European voters. Based on this development, this study analyses the media cov- erage of the 2014 EP elections with special focus on the role of the Spitzenkandidaten. A quantitative content analysis of European election campaign coverage in the opinion leading newspapers of three influential EU member states, Ger- many, France, and the United Kingdom was carried out. The results show large candidate- and country-specific differ- ences regarding the visibility and thematic coverage of the EP elections in general as well as the presentation of the Spitzenkandidaten. The Spitzenkandidaten were not very visible in either the German, French, or British newspaper cov- erage. With respect to the presence and media personalisation of the Spitzenkandidaten, the newspaper coverage of the EP election does not demonstrate any mobilising effect and thus does not reflect the high expectations the European Parliament attributed to the nomination of the Spitzenkandidaten. Keywords comparative cross-national analysis; content analysis; European elections; media coverage; media personalisation; Spitzenkandidaten Issue This article is part of the issue “How Different Were the European Elections of 2014?”, edited by Wouter van der Brug, Katjana Gattermann and Claes de Vreese (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands). © 2016 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Introduction the position: Jean-Claude Juncker, former prime minis- ter of Luxembourg and chairman of the Eurogroup This time it's different. With this slogan the European (EPP); Martin Schulz, president of the EP since 2012 Parliament launched the campaign for the 2014 elec- (S&D); Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Bel- tions to the European Parliament (EP) to announce that gium, member of the EP and leader of the ALDE faction they expected these elections to differ substantially (ALDE); Ska Keller, member of the EP since 2009 from previous ones (Chaucheprat, 2014). They were the (Greens/EFA), and Alexis Tsipras, vice-president of the first EP elections since the Lisbon Treaty, which European Left and prime minister of Greece since 2015 strengthened the position of the EP, had come into ef- (GUE/NGL). The aim of the introduction of the pan-Eu- fect. For example, it was assigned the task of electing ropean Spitzenkandidaten was to personalise the elec- the President of the European Commission. Although tion and ultimately mobilise the European electorate the President was still officially to be nominated by the (Niedermayer, 2014, p. 523). This structural innovation European Council, the five largest EP groups used this was a concerted effort to address the steady decline in reform to each nominate their preferred candidate for voter turnout since the first European elections in 1979. Politics and Governance, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 23-36 23 Empirical findings indeed confirm that the personalisa- spatial distance of candidates and voters is much higher tion of an election campaign can have a positive impact in the context of EP elections than during national elec- on the overall election process: candidates as intermedi- tions, the intermediary role of the mass media is of cru- aries of complex policy issues can reduce this complexity cial importance. Although the Spitzenkandidaten had by rendering politics more accessible, and thus, not only held important European political positions prior to the inform but ultimately mobilise voters (Brettschneider, elections, they were mostly unknown outside their 2002; Huss, 2007; Lass, 1995). Personalisation increases home countries (Hobolt, 2014; Marino, 2014; Piedrafita personal involvement by facilitating voters’ comprehen- & Renman, 2014). Consequently, with respect to the low sion of political issues (Bentele & Fähnrich, 2010; Merkle, voter turnout the question arises as to how far the EP 2015; Ohr, 2000) and was found to have an overall pos- elections were covered in general and to what extent itive effect on attitudes towards politics (Jebril, Albaek, the media referred to the Spitzenkandidaten in their & de Vreese, 2013). election campaign coverage. Previous studies have con- Subsequent to their nomination, each Spitzenkandi- firmed large-scale country-specific differences with re- dat launched a pan-European election campaign in or- spect to the coverage of the EP elections. It is necessary, der to introduce him-/herself to the European public therefore, to deploy a cross-national comparative ap- and to present the position of his/her political group. proach in order to analyse the question of media cover- However, the candidates’ campaign budgets were rela- age of the Spitzenkandidaten. This study analyses the tively low and they tended to focus their campaigning three largest countries in the European Union, Ger- efforts on Central European countries (Pop, 2014). many, France, and the United Kingdom. These three Schulz, for instance, visited Germany eleven times and countries are well suited for comparison in the context Juncker went to Germany eight times. France and Bel- of EP elections not only because of their population size gium received more attention than other European and, thus, their number of seats and influence in the EP, countries too, while the United Kingdom for instance did but also because they differ in terms of their media sys- not appear on the campaign route of either of these two tem, with each country reflecting one of three different previously mentioned candidates at all (Schmitt, Hobolt, media systems according to Hallin and Mancini (2004). & Popa, 2014). With regards to timing, the candidates Additionally, in contrast to general voter turnout, voter focused their campaign activities on the last three to participation in these three countries increased relative four weeks before the elections, resulting in an intensi- to the 2009 EP elections, despite differences in cam- fied effort during May, the month of the ballot. Further- paign efforts. more, the Spitzenkandidaten exchanged their view- points in the context of several European TV debates, a 2. The EP Elections in the Media novelty in the context of EP elections. From April 9 to May 20, nine TV debates were held in the three working Due to the physical and conceptual distance between languages of the EU (French, English and German). They the European institutions, their politicians and voters, were broadcast in all member states on national televi- mass media functions as a key actor and as a decisive sion and online via several web outlets. The majority of factor in the information and opinion-forming processes the debates, however, focused exclusively on the candi- of voters in the context of EP elections (Strömbäck et al., dates of the two largest EP factions, Juncker and Schulz. 2013). The mass media is the main source of infor- In addition to regular campaigning the candidates used mation for the electorate, even more so during national online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter in elections. Various studies have confirmed that greater which Schulz again showed the highest campaign activ- visibility of the EP elections in the media positively influ- ity. As a result, he garnered the most attention in terms ences the factual knowledge and turnout of the EP elec- of followers and likes (Pop, 2014; Schmitt et al., 2014). tions (Banducci & Semetko, 2003; de Vreese & Boom- However, there is no consensus with regards to the gaarden, 2006; Gerstlé, Magni-Berton, & Piar, 2006; extent that the new approach can be evaluated as a suc- Hobolt, Spoon, & Tilley, 2009; Weßels, 2005). However, cess, if at all. The presence of Spitzenkandidaten sup- compared to national elections, the mass media covers ported the professionalisation process of EP elections in the EP elections less extensively and tends to focus its general, but, in terms of the final voter turnout, the al- campaign coverage on the very last days of the campaign terations in the electoral process did not have the effect (Boomgaarden, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Schuck, 2010; the EP factions desired, and instead they reached a new Leroy & Siune, 1994; Peter, 2004). Still, cross-national low point. Still, compared to previous EP elections, the comparisons of different EP elections found a general in- turnout decreased to a lesser extent and preliminary re- crease of their visibility over time (Boomgaarden et al., search demonstrates that knowledge of the candidates 2010; de Vreese, Banducci, Semetko, & Boomgaarden, had a minor positive influence on voter turnout 2006; Schuck, Azrout et al., 2011; Vliegenthart, Schuck, (Schmitt, Hobolt, & Popa, 2015). It is not enough, how- Boomgaarden, & de Vreese, 2008). In terms of media-re-