2019 European Elections Campaign

Platform Europe is an international research project led by Roma Tre University and co-funded by the European Parliament (EP)’s within the multiannual work programme for grants in the area of communication (2016-2019), category of communication actions in support of the 2019 European Elections COMM/SUBV/2018 /E. As explained in the call for proposal, the aim of EP was ”co-finance communication actions aimed at providing citizens with non–partisan and factual information in the run-up to the 2019 European elections, which will take place on 23-26 May 2019. For the purpose of this call for proposals, “communication actions” refer to online and offline actions and products that stimulate debate and engagement in the European democratic process”. Principal investigator of the research project Platform Europe and coordinator of the European Election Monitoring Center is prof. Edoardo Novelli, Università di Roma Tre, Italy. Co-coordinator of the European Election Monitoring Center is prof. Bengt Johansson, Gothenburg University, Sweden. General aims of Platform Europe were: • to promote the diffusion and knowledge of the European election campaign; • to improve the transnational circulation of the electoral materials produced in the different nations; • to allow European citizens to access and compare the different national European campaigns and political proposals; • to improve the comparative study and knowledge of European political communication, political cultures, and political history. Specific Objectives of platform Europe were: • to establish 27 National research units • to define Codebooks of analysis • to develop an online web-platform for the analysis and uploading of the materials • to monitor, collect and analyze the European electoral campaigns in the 27 Member States. • to create a database of electoral materials produced for the European Election campaigns in each Member State. • to develop a digital platform containing the materials collected. • to run 27 national workshops. • to release research reports on the European electoral campaign progress and development, at both national and transnational levels. To accomplish these goals at the end of 2018 an international network of scholars on political communication and electoral campaigns and a great number of researchers were selected through an international “call for research”, and presentations in international conferences, as the 2018 Ecrea conference in Zürich. At the beginning of the year 2019, a network comprising of around fifty university and research centers, with more than a hundred scholars, researchers, and PhD students, was ready to start its activity. During a two days Organizational Meeting, held at the University of Roma Tre the 9th and 10th of April 2019, the EEMC website and the back office platform were officially presented at the representatives of the 27 national research units, also involved in a one day training session on the analysis codebooks, the monitoring and the use of the platform. The analysis looked at verbal aspects of the campaign content, such as if the appeals had a national or European dimension, which policy issue the content focused on, if negativity and humor was used. Further, we also analyzed visual elements, such as facial expressions and dress code of the politicians, iconographic styles, and to what extent political symbols were visible. More than 800 posters and almost 500 press ads and television spots of the 2019 election campaign have been collected and analyzed. The inquiry of Facebook posts is even more extensive, where more than 8000 different kinds of posts have been categorized. This dataset gives an unique opportunity to see whether there are differences in both campaign content and campaign style around Europe and between parties