The writing is on the wall: the limited professionalization of European parliament election campaign posters

Abstract

This article examines the overtime variation in content and style of European Parliament election campaign posters in the Netherlands and Italy. We put forward several hypotheses that tap the professionalization of political communication against the backdrop of politicization of EU affairs. Our sample comprises 333 posters for a total of 59 parties, which we analyse by quantitative content analysis. With the exception of personalization elements, our results show that professionalization trends are hardly manifest in the extent to which election posters change over time by means of featuring party logos, explicit calls to vote, European symbols, policy issues or Eurosceptic messages. While there are some marked differences on the latter four indicators between challenger and mainstream parties, these differences do not become more or less pronounced over time. Although Italian posters have become slightly more professionalized than Dutch posters, we conclude that European Parliament election posters have remained rather traditional.