EUROPEAN ELECTIONS MONITORING CENTER WEB ARCHIVE - RESEARCH REPORT EUROPEAN ELECTIONS CAMPAIGN IMAGES, TOPICS, MEDIA IN THE 28 MEMBER STATES Editors Edoardo Novelli Bengt Johansson 2019 EUROPEAN ELE TORAL CAMPAIGNS Eds Edoardo Novelli Bengt Johanssonwww.electionsmonitoringcenter.eu Manuscript completed in June 2019 PE 637.961 The European Parliament is not liable for any consequence stemming from the reuse of this publication. Brussels, ©European Union 2019 Reuse is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. The reuse policy of European Commission documents is regulated by Decision 2011/833/EU (OJ L 330, 14.12.2011, p. 39). www.electionsmonitoringcenter.eu [email protected] @eemc.europe @eemc_eu EUROPEAN ELECTIONS CAMPAIGN IMAGES, TOPICS, MEDIA IN THE 28 MEMBER STATES Editors Edoardo Novelli Bengt Johansson International research project lead by University Roma Tre Funded by the European Parliament Category Events COMM/SUBV/2018/E/0147 Directorate-General for Communication Public Opinion Monitoring Unit July 2019 - PE 637.961 CREDITS EDITORS EDOARDO NOVELLI BENGT JOHANSSON WEB DATA INTELLIGENCE & PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT KAPUSONS WWW.KAPUSONS.IT EXTREME WWW.WEB-LIVE.IT UGO ESPOSITO, DANIELE CALABRESE, RICCARDO DI MARCANTONIO, EMANUELA D’EUGENIO, FLORESTANO PASTORE, DANIELE DI BELLA, GIANLUCA LAVEZZO, DANIEL VERES. GRAPHIC & DESIGN LORENZO PIERFELICE (WEB DESIGN) DATA ANALYST IRENE ARTIBANI PRODUCTION AND GRAPHICAL SUPPORT CASSIOPEA ROMA SRL ABOUT THE PUBLISHER THIS REPORT WAS CO-EDITED BY THE PUBLIC OPINION MONITORING UNIT WITHIN THE DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR COMMUNICATION (DG COMM) OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT. TO CONTACT THE PUBLIC OPINION MONITORING UNITE PLEASE WRITE TO [email protected] DISCLAMER THIS DOCUMENT IS RESULT OF A INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH PROJECT LED BY ROMA TRE UNIVERSITY AND CO-FUNDED BY THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (EP)’S WITHIN THE MULTIANNUAL WORK PROGRAMME FOR GRANTS IN THE AREA OF COMMUNICATION (2016-2019), CATEGORY OF COMMUNICATION ACTIONS IN SUPPORT OF THE 2019 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS COMM/SUBV/2018 /E. THE CONTENT OF THE DOCUMENT IS THE SOLE RESPONSABILITY OF ITS AUTHOR(S) AND ANY OPINION EXPRESSED HEREIN SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN TO REPRESENT AN OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE PARLIAMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 THE PROJECT PLATFORM EUROPE 13 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS MONITORING CENTER INTRODUCTION 14 TYPE OF MATERIAL AND AREAS OF MONITORING 16 ON WHICH DIMENSION ARE THE CONTENTS FOCUSED ON? 18 HOW IS EUROPE REPRESENTED? 19 MAIN TOPICS OF THE CAMPAIGN 20 NEGATIVE CAMPAIGN 21 PERSONALIZATION OF THE CAMPAIGN 23 NUMBERS OF SOCIAL CONTENTS 24 FACEBOOK POSTS BY COUNTRY 25 TOP20 POLITICAL PARTIES BY POSTS 26 FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT BY COUNTRY 27 TOP20 POLITICAL PARTIES BY ENGAGEMENT 28 FACEBOOK REACTIONS BY COUNTRY 29 TOP20 POLITICAL PARTIES BY REACTIONS 30 33 NATIONAL REPORTS AUSTRIA 35 BELGIUM 43 BULGARIA 51 CROATIA 59 CYPRUS 67 CZECH REPUBLIC 77 DENMARK 85 ESTONIA 93 FINLAND 101 FRANCE 109 GERMANY 117 GREECE 125 HUNGARY 135 IRELAND 143 ITALY 151 LATVIA 159 LITHUANIA 167 LUXEMBOURG 174 MALTA 183 NETHERLANDS 191 POLAND 199 PORTUGAL 207 ROMANIA 215 SLOVAKIA 223 SLOVENIA 231 SPAIN 239 SWEDEN 247 UNITED KINGDON 255 263 APPENDIX MEMBERS OF NATIONAL LOCAL UNITS 264 INSTITUTIONS INVOLVED IN THE PROJECT 266 WORKSHOPS 268 CODEBOOK OF THE MONITORING 270 www.electionsmonitoringcenter.eu FOCUS: LUXEMBOURG THE PROJECT PLATFORM EUROPE Edoardo Novelli Coordinator of the EEMC Università Roma Tre [email protected] 8 PLATFORM EUROPE Platform Europe is an international research project led by Roma • to improve the transnational circulation of the electoral materials Tre University and co-funded by the European Parliament (EP) produced in the different nations; within the multiannual work program for grants in the area of • to allow European citizens to access and compare the different communication (2016-2019), category of communication actions national European campaigns and political proposals; in support of the 2019 European Elections COMM/SUBV/2018 /E. • to improve the comparative study and knowledge of European As explained in the call for proposal, the EP’s aim was ”to co- political communication, political cultures and political history. finance communication actions aimed at providing citizens with Platform Europe’s specific aims were: non–partisan and factual information in the run up to the 2019 • to establish 28 National research units European elections to be held on 23-26 May 2019. For the purpose • to define Codebooks of analysis of this call for bids, “communication actions” are online and offline • to develop an online web-platform for the analysis and uploading actions and products that stimulate debate and engagement in the of the materials European democratic process”. • to monitor, collect and analyse the European electoral campaigns The principal investigator of the Platform Europe research project in the 28 Member States. and coordinator of the European Election Monitoring Centre is prof. • to create a database of electoral materials produced for the Edoardo Novelli, Università di Roma Tre, Italy. European Election campaigns in each Member State. The co-coordinator of the European Election Monitoring Centre is • to develop a digital platform containing the materials collected. prof. Bengt Johansson, Gothenburg University, Sweden. • to run 26 national workshops. Platform Europe’s general aims were: • to release research reports on the European electoral campaign • to promote the dissemination and knowledge of the European progress and development, at both national and transnational election campaign; level. To accomplish these goals, an international network of scholars • A Final Conference of the Platform Europe project at the House on political communication and electoral campaigns and a great of European History in Brussels, on 11 July 2019. number of researchers were selected at the end of 2018, through an • Articles in academic journals and presentations at national and international “call for research”, with presentations at international international scientific conferences. conferences, such as the 2018 Ecrea conference in Zürich. At • Reviews and comments in national newspapers and on television the beginning of 2019, a network of around fifty university and stations. research centres, with more than a hundred scholars, researchers • More articles and analyses, which will be published during 2019 and PhD students, was ready to start work. During a two-day and beyond. Organisational Meeting, held at Università di Roma Tre on 9 and 10 April 2019, the EEMC website and the back office platform were Today, Social Research cannot progress without an integrated officially presented to the representatives of the 28 national methodological approach to observing phenomena. For this research units, also involved in a one-day training session on the reason, we thought that it was necessary to implement methods analysis codebooks and the monitoring and use of the platform. and tools that would allow the performance of extensive and The analysis looked at verbal aspects of the campaign content, widespread research, and the real-time collection of an enormous whether the appeals had a national or European dimension, amount of data, constantly produced both on the web and which policy issue the content focused on, whether negativity and social media. Platform Europe and EEMC have been supported humour were used. We also analysed visual elements, such as by a technological tool in 28 European countries: an engine that facial expressions and the dress code adopted by the politicians, collected all the Facebook posts produced by the main parties and iconographic styles, and to what extent political symbols were politicians who ran in the European elections. visible. More than 1000 posters and press ads, and almost 500 For this research, a crawler managed by a small AI component television commercials for the 2019 election campaign were collected all the Facebook content posted by monitored accounts, collected and analysed. The examination of Facebook posts was in order to make them available to the various European research even more extensive, with the categorisation of more than 11000 teams involved in this political communication analysis. While 9 different kinds of post. This dataset offers a unique opportunity to gathering the content, the engine automatically assigned a see whether there are differences in both campaign content and thematic attribution following the analysis model developed by the campaign style around Europe and between parties. scientific community participating in the project. The crawler worked on a 4-weeks time span, gathering 30,016 The main outputs of Platform Europe are: elements from social media and providing updated metrics in real • The online European Election Monitoring Centre EEMC time, such as the engagement generated by political subjects and (www.electionsonitoringcenter.eu). It started its activity at the the most relevant topics of the online political agenda. beginning of the electoral campaign and, during the four weeks The web intelligence platform supplied each national research leading up to the vote, allowed thousands of visitors to watch unit with a reserved area in the back office, where they were able the evolution of the electoral campaigns in the 28 nations and to to monitor and file all the contents gathered during the election compare their similarities and differences. campaign. Specific codebooks were drawn up both to file the social • A multidisciplinary