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Dissemination of the preliminary results of the project Mediatized EU - Mediatized Discourses on Europeanization and Their Representations in Public Perceptions, funded by the H2020 programme of the European Commission, by Maria Raquel Freire.

Discussion: Carla Luís, João Rodrigues, Sílvia Ferreira and Vanda Amaro Dias (CES)

The project Mediatized EU - Mediatized Discourses on Europeanization and Their Representations in Public Perceptions, funded by the H2020 programme of the European Commission, aims to analyse how the media discourses are constructed to foster or hamper the European project and how they resonate among the public by focusing on the elite-media-public triangle. The project analyses the media representation of the European integration process in five main dimensions, namely the enlargements of the European Union (EU), the economic and financial crises, the refugee and migrant crisis, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. How media representations shape public and elite perceptions of this process is also informed by the interactions between the media, the political elite and the public, hence the triangulation at the heart of this analysis aimed at deconstructing dynamics of control, manipulation, replication, (in)dependence, among others. The project conducts content analysis and critical discourse analysis of current media discourses on these issues, interviews with political and media elites, and focus groups with relevant audiences.

The project involves seven partners, and the study will focus on the media studies of each - Belgium, Spain, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland and Portugal, EU member states, and Georgia, which is part of the Eastern Partnership and has signed an Association Agreement with the EU - providing a comparative analysis, and also developing recommendations. In the case of Portugal, which the CES research team leads (Maria Raquel Freire, Sofia José Santos, Moara Crivelente and Luíza Bezerra), we have selected three newspapers and three newscasts for analysis, in a time period between September 2021 and March 2022. In this event we will present the preliminary conclusions of the study we are developing, as a starting point for a wider discussion of the research developed in the context of the Research Line (Semi)peripheral Capitalism: Crises and alternatives, allowing the identification of points of convergence and differentiated dialogues.