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Abstract

Over the past decades, a series of treaty changes and a period of crises
have led to the politicisation of the European Union (EU) and have raised
questions about its democratic accountability. Communication by politicians
plays a key role in the process of European integration since it can
contribute to the EU’s throughput legitimacy, it can affect the public’s
attitudes towards the EU and it can influence voting decisions in national
and European elections.

In this thesis, I explore how political actors in EU Member States (MS)
communicate about the EU across a period of more than 10 years (2008-
2023). Departing from different theoretical standpoints, the three papers
that make up this thesis focus on how national politics influences the way
that parliamentarians and heads of government talk about the supranational
EU. I provide evidence from a diverse range of new and existing
sources, including head of government speeches, parliamentary speeches
and social media posts. I analyse this data using a combination of text-asdata
methods such as topic models, sentiment analysis and hand-coding.

The papers make several contributions to existing literature. They allow
us to empirically trace the communication of politicians across multiple
countries and years, they use and validate quantitative text analysis methods
and they enrich theoretical frameworks on political communication in
the context of the EU. Taken jointly, the findings of the three papers can
provide a comprehensive insight into the information that the public receives
about the EU and can have implications for debates on the EU’s
democratic accountability.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) J Political Science > JZ International relations
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > International Politics School of Policy & Global Affairs > School of Policy & Global Affairs Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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