Research Papers

How do fringe Eurosceptic parties interact with the media in general and political reporters in particular? Do they prefer to direct their resources to the national or to the European public spheres? In answering these questions, this paper has an exploratory character seeking to provide a bridge between the literatures on political communication systems and the study of Euroscepticism. It forms part of the ongoing debates with regards to the Europeanization of domestic public spheres and the parliamentary behavior of Eurosceptic parties. The main argument put forward here is that while addressing the same national audience, the type of interaction between the media and Eurosceptic political actors differs significantly between the European and the domestic arena. In particular, fringe Eurosceptic parties prefer to direct their communication strategies primarily to the domestic level. That is particularly surprising given that this type of parties tend to gain more seats at the EU level and Euroscepticism is central to their ideology. We argue that this is even more apparent in countries where Eurosceptic parties are involved in government formation. The approach of journalists in Brussels towards Eurosceptic actors however, having socialised with European elites, depends on the level of public support for EU membership in their home country. In order to test our argument, we conduct a cross-country and cross-level comparative analysis of the interaction between the media and four right-wing Eurosceptic parties each from a distinct political context - namely the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Austrian Freedom Party, the French Front National and the United Kingdom Independence Party. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, we rely on a quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles and semi-structured interviews with journalists.