Portuguese press coverage of the 2019 european elections

Empirical knowledge about the media coverage of European Parliament elections is a prerequisite for assessing the wellbeing of democratic processes in Europe. It has been argued that the EU democratic deficit can only be overcome with the establishment of a European public sphere, in which the European topics become visible and discussed in national media, thus promoting citizens' knowledge and engagement with EU policies. As maintained by Wodak and Wright (2006: 253), constant communication between the demos and its representatives is key to guaranteeing the representation and participation of citizens in the EU polity. Thus the aim of this paper, following the lens of critical discourse analysis, is to investigate the Portuguese press coverage of the latest European elections made both by dailies and weeklies between 13-27 May 2019. The focus will put upon the main topics of the electoral campaign, their degrees of salience, the visibility of political actors, the way the EU is described and framed so as to assess the degree of europeanization of the Portuguese press coverage and its wider implications for the process of European construction/deconstruction.