Communicating Political Positions on European Issues: A Comparison of Parties and Newspapers in Seven Countries
| Author | Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann,Beatrice Eugster |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920952001 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920952001
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(1) 62 –82
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920952001
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Communicating Political
Positions on European Issues:
A Comparison of Parties and
Newspapers in Seven Countries
Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann1
and Beatrice Eugster2
Abstract
This article starts from the observation that most voters know relatively little about positions
and plans of political parties, especially when European Union politics is concerned. One reason
for this could be that the main sources for political information, party communication and mass
media coverage, provide voters only little concrete information about positions and plans of
political parties. We ask how concretely, respectively vaguely, political parties and mass media
communicate political positions prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections. We conducted
a quantitative content analysis of all European Union–related press releases from 46 national
political parties and of all European Union–related articles of 14 national quality newspapers
from 7 European countries 12 weeks before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our
analysis shows that press releases as well as media coverage contain more concrete political
positions on European Union issues than vague political statements. Other than expected,
newspaper coverage provided the public with less concrete information than political actors
did. Nevertheless, countries vary with regard to the extent to which party communication
or newspaper coverage contain vague statements. We cannot find empirical support that the
communication of concrete political positions depends on a party’s “extremity” of issue position
or on the type of issue.
Keywords
political ambiguity, position blurring, equivocation, strategic political communication, European
Parliament elections
Accepted: 31 July 2020
1Department of Science Communication, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
2Department of Communication and Media Science, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Both authors contributed equally
Corresponding author:
Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann, Department of Science Communication, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,
Englerstr. 2, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Email: leidecker-sandmann@kit.edu
952001PSW0010.1177/1478929920952001Political Studies ReviewLeidecker-Sandmann and Eugster
research-article2020
Article
Leidecker-Sandmann and Eugster 63
Introduction
From a normative democratic viewpoint, it would be desirable if citizens were informed
before elections about the aims and plans of political parties so they could make rational
election decisions (e.g. Downs, 1957; Habermas, 1981). Having political knowledge con-
tributes to better political decisions and a higher quality of democratic representation.
Providing politically relevant information “is regarded as one of the core functions of
political parties as they should help citizens in evaluating the complex and remote world
of politics” (Popa et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, most European voters have relatively little knowledge about the plans
and positions of political parties—especially regarding European Union (EU) politics and
policies (Hurrelmann et al., 2015; Maier, 2009; Popa et al., 2020; Westle, 2013)—and
they do not always build their voting decisions rationally (e.g. Downs, 1957; Kepplinger
and Maurer, 2005). The reason for this could, on the one hand, lie with the voters them-
selves: they might use political information only sparsely or selectively, process it incom-
pletely, and/or forget the information received (e.g. Downs, 1957; Kepplinger and
Daschmann, 1997; Lodge et al., 1995). On the other hand, it could be due to the sources
of political information that citizens use: they could contain little information relevant to
an election (i.e. the “quantity” of information) or little concrete information (i.e. the
“quality” of information; e.g. Maier, 2009; Maurer, 2009).
Citizens have largely two main sources of political information. The first is party com-
munication (such as political parties’ election manifestos, election posters and spots, and
press releases). However, numerous studies have shown that voters rarely use political
sources of information because they require an active recipient (e.g. Kepplinger and
Maurer, 2005; Maurer, 2009; Ohr and Schrott, 2001; Popa et al., 2020). The second is
mass media coverage. Traditional mass media report daily on political events, and citi-
zens often use this political information (see e.g. Maier, 2009; Maurer, 2009; Popa et al.,
2020; Schulz, 2011). Furthermore, recipients may receive political information “acciden-
tally” when consuming mass media without actively searching for it.
Research Questions
In this article, we focus on the concreteness, that is, the “quality” aspect of the informa-
tion available on EU politics and policies in both of the aforementioned sources of politi-
cal information, namely party communication and mass media coverage, put forward by
political actors. More specifically, we are interested in how concretely or vaguely politi-
cal actors communicate their political positions on EU issues and how concretely or
vaguely news media cover party positions on EU issues.1
Consequently, our research questions are as follows (following a study by Maurer,
2009): First, how concretely or vaguely did political parties themselves directly commu-
nicate political positions prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections (EPE) and how
where they covered in the mass media? Was there a difference in the communication of
concrete political positions between political parties and the media—or more bluntly,
which informed citizens more concretely? Second, did differences exist between different
types of parties regarding the communication of political positions? And finally, were
there country-specific patterns in the communication of concrete political positions by
political parties and the media and, if so, can we explain them?
In the following sections, we first provide an overview of the (theoretical as well as
empirical) state of research on vague political communication by political parties and by
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