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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections were held against a ‘rising tide’ of euroscepticism that seems to jeopardise the very process of European construction. When asked about the reasons for not voting in the forthcoming elections for the EP, 46% of Portuguese citizens, according to data provided by the Eurobarometer (2018), answered that “they didn’t know enough about the role of the EU”, a percentage clearly above from the average of other European Union (EU) Member States (34%).
Discussing the process of people’s engagement or disengagement with the EU also entails, apart from taking into account a whole range of material aspects, analysing the crucial role news media have to play in this process. They can either help citizens understand Europe and enhance grassroots democratic participation across EU Member States or use EU elections as a pretext to speak about their own nation and politics.
As maintained by Norman Fairclough, social and material structures are shaped by discourse, which not only reflects or represents society but also “helps to constitute (and change) knowledge and its objects, social relations and social identity” (1992: 8).
Thus the aim of this paper, following the lens of critical discourse analysis, is to investigate the Portuguese press coverage of the latest European elections made both by dailies (Correio da Manhã, Público, Jornal de Notícias and Jornal I) and weeklies (Expresso, Diário de Notícias and Sol) between 13-27 May 2019 (the period that covers the electoral campaign and its immediate aftermath).
The focus will be mainly put upon the main issues and topics of the electoral campaign, their degrees of salience, visibility of European and national leaders / actors, news framings and pragmatics so as to assess the degree of europeanization of the press coverage and its wider implications for the process of European integration and democratic participation.
Description
Keywords
Press European elections Portugal
Citation
Centeno, M.J., Simões-Ferreira, I. & Gomes, P.M. (2021, sep, 09). Democracy and the European construction: The role of the Portuguese newspapers in the latest electoral campaign to the European parliament (2019). Paper presented at 8th European Communication Conference (ECREA), online conference, Prague, Czech Republic.
Publisher
European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA)