Silke E. Adam, born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1976. Ph.D. from University of Hohenheim. Professor of Political Communication and Director of the Institute of Communication and Media Science, University of Bern.
Fellow (1 April 2013 – 30 June 2013)
The Role of National Parties for the Politicization of EU Integration
The overall aim of the project is to investigate whether national parties contribute to the politicization of EU integration, and if so, under which conditions and in which ways they contribute to this politicization. Politicization hereby means that a topic turns into an issue as it is put on the public agenda (salience) and positions are voiced. To understand the process of politicization we intend to study the interplay between national parties as issue entrepreneurs (mostly Eurosceptic parties), issue environments, i.e. the overall party as well as the media agenda, and parties as issue traditionalists. Empirically, we aim to combine quantitative content analysis of parties’ strategic communication (press releases and televised campaign spots) and media’s reporting in a twelve-month period preceding the 2014 European elections. The project thereby applies a comparative research design (Austria, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom) in order to allow for the analysis of the relevance of the party system and of other country-context factors for politicization processes.
Selected Publications
Adam, Silke & Maier, Michaela (2011): ‘National Parties as Politicizers of EU Integration? Party Campaign Communication in the up-run to the 2009 European Parliament Election.’ European Union Politics. 12 (3): 431-454.
Adam, Silke & Maier, Michaela (2010): ‘Personalization of Politics: Towards a Future Research Agenda. A Critical Review of the Empirical and Normative State of the Art.’ In Salmon, Sharles T. (edt.): Communication Yearbook 34: 213-258.
Adam, Silke (2007): ‘Domestic adaptations of Europe. A Comparative Study of the Debates on EU Enlargement and a Common Constitution in the German and French Quality Press.’ In International Journal of Public Opinion Research 19 (4): 409-433.