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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Introduction: For 75 years, Europe has been a land of freedom, democracy and hope. However, as Steiner (2004) has put it, Europe is above all an idea that many Europeans tend to not acknowledge. According to the author, memory, culture, or the landscape are some of the elements of a European identity always in need of reinventing itself. Riemen (2016) has even called Europe a princess and many of those that try to reach our continent – sometimes, in very tragic ways – tend to highlight another one of its features: human solidarity. Nevertheless, the lack of understanding of and interest in ”Europe” has come to light in recent years. In the same vein, the European Union has been inherently perceived as a mere ”political” or ”economic” forum that is very distant from the citizens. More than echoing the pessimism in this research, the authors have tried to understand the role of the press as a medium to bring these two groups – the citizens and the institution — closer. Even in the social media era, the Portuguese population tends to turn to the press (we will consider here only the digital press) to understand what is going on in the world and they refer to it as the main source of credible information (Reuters Institute, 2023). The main purpose of the research as being introduced here is to understand how present the European Union was in the Portuguese press during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union – PPEU (first semester of 2021). Which of the Portuguese Presidency’s priorities (e.g., Resilient Europe, Green Europe, Digital, Global, Social), were brought up in the press? Are there significant differences among newspapers and/or topics? These are some of the questions that guide this research. Research design: To address these research questions, a content analysis of the five main digital newspapers (on the basis of the number of its readers) was developed. In each newspaper, a search with keywords or cronyms as “EU”, “European Union”, “Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union” was done. Following this kind of classical procedure in content analysis, traditionally a quantitative method to organize a great volume of data, a second procedure was applied concerning the five themes acknowledged as priorities by the PPEU. In a second moment, formal analysis and textual analysis enabled some other findings concerning the importance given by the newspaper to the theme or what kind of article we are analyzing. Results and interpretation: Almost four hundred pieces related to the European Union during the Portuguese Presidency were found in the Correio da Manhã, Diária de Notícias/Jornal de Notícias, Expresso, Observador e Público newspapers. Two journals emerged as having dealt with the subject in a much more detailed way. It can also be asserted that two of the subjects were prioritized: resilience and global Europe. From an interpretative point of view, it is quite interesting to note that many of the articles were clearly from the Portuguese news agency, LUSA, and replicated in many of the newspapers.
Description
Baseado na comunicação apresentada no I Congreso Internacional: Desafíos en la comunicación de la Unión Europea “Combatir la desinformación, el populismo y los nuevos conflictos en el presente y futuro de la democracia", Universidad de Sevilla, España (23/10/22023)
Keywords
European Union Media Portuguese presidency PPEU
Citation
Ferreira, J.P., Eiró-Gomes, M. & Shumskaya, D. (2024). Europe: An invisible princess?. In J.A. Navarro Moreno & M.C. Arcos Vargas (coords), Desafíos en la comunicación de la Unión Europea. Libro de resúmenes del I Congreso Internacional CICOMEU, (pp. 14-15). Egregius