The (Lasting) Effects of the Crisis in the Media Debates Across Europe: An Analysis of EU Politicisation Before and After the Eurozone Crisis, 2000ꟷ2017

Abstract: The paper seeks to understand the consequences of the Great Recession by looking at the way in which debates about Europe have changed in key newspapers during national election campaigns. It focuses on the politicisation of the EU, and in particular the Eurozone crisis in newspapers in Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain before and after 2009. We make use of a unique dataset of over 150,000 articles from 10 mainstream newspapers covering 20 national elections in the five countries mentioned above. Our dataset covers all legislative election campaigns in these countries from 2000 until 2017, enabling us to measure the lasting effects of the Eurozone crisis. These articles are analysed with the implementation and validation of an innovative computer-assisted measure of politicisation that assesses the salience and polarisation of the EU and in particular Eurozone economic crisis topic.