This paper connects the interest group literature on strategies with framing research. Framing by interest groups is an often important part of outside strategies which aim to influence the frames adopted by politicians and the decisions they take. The objective of this paper is to investigate 1) what type of interest groups express framing practices within the news media on European legislative decision making and 2) what type of issues invoke interest groups to apply framing practices. The expectation is that business groups and groups with specific constituencies adopt different framing practices compared to public and diffuse interests. It is also presumed that salient and non-technical issues will invoke les framing practices compared to non-salient and technical issues. Moreover, we expect issues that appeal to the common good are more likely to raise framing activities. The paper will analyze framing practices by interest groups for a set of 20 EU legislative proposals. The first part of the paper will consist of an in-depth characterization of existing framing practices and the second part aims to explain variation in these practices between different type of interest groups and issues.
