The Visibility and Communication of Cohesion Policy in Online Media

Mendez, Carlos and Triga, Vasiliki and Bachtler, John and Djouvas, Costas and Mendez, Fernando and Stier, Sebastian (2019) The Visibility and Communication of Cohesion Policy in Online Media. European Parliament, Brussels.

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Abstract

This study evaluates the visibility and communication of cohesion policy in online media. It employs a mixed methods approach to investigate media coverage, representation and user perceptions of cohesion policy in online media. The research draws on an original dataset of over 60,000 news articles and 100,000 user-generated comments. It also analyses social media – over 11,000 Facebook posts and over five million tweets on Twitter – and 13,000 EU press releases. The key conclusion is that cohesion policy visibility is relatively low in online media. Policy recommendations are provided to improve cohesion policy visibility particularly through citizen engagement.