European Union

The entry outlines the state of communication research about the European Union (EU). Starting by outlining the major paradigms of this line of research, we partition research along the two categories of actors most focused on, i.e., (1) political elites such as parties, parliaments, and EU institutions, and (2) the media. The state of the art is connected to political transformations of the EU as such, going from a permissive consensus to an increasingly constraining dissensus, limiting elites in their decisions about EU politics. This constraining dissensus is fuelled by over a decade of different EU crises, leading to strong politicization of EU affairs, coming with an increased public salience, but also increased negativity, and Euroscepticism.