Does personalisation further Europeanise national public spheres? The Spitzenkandidat process in the 2014 and 2019 European parliamentary elections.

This paper explores whether the lead candidates process for the European Commission's Presidency (Spitzenkandidat) increases the Europeanisation of national public spheres to a certain extent. National public spheres are likely to be Europeanised when simultaneous discussions of the same topics take place across member states and under the same criteria of relevance. Focusing on the media-related public sphere, the research employs quantitative content analysis and qualitative frame analysis in the German, Luxembourgish, French, Belgian, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and British press for the 2014 and 2019 European elections. While in 2014, the salience of the Spitzenkandidat process was relevantly high, despite certain country- and media-specific variations, in 2019, the press coverage dropped off by almost half. At the same time, most of the selected newspapers reported on the issue using the same criteria of relevance, namely, similar frames and meaning structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]