A community of Europeans or party politics? Symbolic and pragmatic EU framing in party communication during the Covid-19 pandemic

The aim of this comparative study is to analyse how different actors and political parties have politicised ‘Europe’ and the ‘EU’ during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Previous research has shown that the narratives chosen when talking about the EU as a problem-solving arena and/or polity can drastically impact the level of support for European integration. Yet, despite the importance of EU framing, an extensive comparative analysis on how the EU is framed during the global pandemic 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 deliver an empirically grounded picture of the framing strategies of different actors, which helps to understand politicisation processes in the European Public Sphere.