A window of opportunity? The relevance of the rotating European Union presidency in the public eye. (June 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Eisele, Olga; Heidenreich, Tobias; Kriegler, Nina; Syed Ali, Pamina; Boomgaarden, Hajo G.
• Is Part Of: European Union politics. Volume 24:Number 2(2023)
• Page Start: 327
• Page End: 347
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Subjects: Austria -- automated content analysis -- manual content analysis -- media coverage -- rotating EU presidency; European Union countries -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 320.9405
• DOI: 10.1177/14651165221142504
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1465-1165

Abstract

The rotating EU presidency's relevance for EU politics has decreased since the introduction of a permanent council president. However, news salience and framing of the own government acting as the EU presidency can amplify publicity for EU affairs. We, therefore, evaluate the visibility and framing of the EU presidency in 12 Austrian newspapers for 2009–2019. We conduct an automated text analysis of 22 presidencies over 11 years, testing several hypotheses statistically, and qualify results via manually coded frames of the Austrian EU presidency in 2018. The results confirm the crucial importance of the domestication of EU politics, underscoring the potential of the presidency to serve as a window of opportunity for public debate. We discuss our findings with reference to the EU's democratic deficit.