The EU and Covid-19 – A Comparative Frame Analysis of the European Union During the First Wave of the Covid-19 Crisis

The Covid-19 crisis arrived from nowhere and became the dominant issue facing the EU and its member states in a very short time frame. The aim of this comparative study is to analyse how different actors and political parties frame ‘Europe’ and the ‘EU’ during the first wave of this pandemic. Previous research has shown that the narratives chosen when talking about the EU can drastically impact the level of support for the EU in general, and for EU enlargement in particular. Yet, despite the importance of EU framing, an extensive comparative analysis on how the EU is framed during its most recent crisis is still missing. This project tackles this question by employing a quantitative frame analysis of a large data set of media content and political communication collected in seven EU member states and at the EU level. The analysis compares the framing used by different actors (media, government, opposition, radical populist parties) on different communication platforms (traditional versus social media) and in different arenas (domestic arena versus European arena). The results of this study are expected to deliver an empirically grounded picture of the framing strategies of different actors within the European Union, which can potentially carry important implications for the formation of public opinion about Europe.