The dynamics of media, political, and public agendas in EU–China trade relations A European perspective

Trade remains the cornerstone of EU–China relations, yet bilateral ties have shifted from economic partnership to strategic rivalry. Amid tensions over conflicting economic interests and divergent political values, the topic of EU–China trade relations has gained prominence in media, political, and public debate. Previous research predominantly focused on the Chinese landscape, with the European context largely unexamined. This dissertation employs a mixed-methods approach incorporating content analysis, time-series analysis, a panel survey, and semi-structured interviews to investigate the dynamics between media, political, and public agendas regarding EU–China trade relations from a European perspective.
National news coverage of EU–China trade relations reflects growing trends of negativity and politicization, characterized by the prominence of the US-intervention frame and political elites’ voices. This national media agenda interacts reciprocally with the supranational political agenda, a dynamic particularly pronounced among far-right MEPs and involving trade issues with high geographical proximity. Individual consumption of news and documentary series facilitates issue knowledge acquisition; however, public perceptions remain stable, rooted in individual characteristics rather than fluctuations within daily news cycles.
Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to framing theory by identifying emerging issue-specific frames, advances agenda-setting scholarship by investigating the contingency of media-politics dynamics within a multi-level governance structure, and refines the understanding of media-public dynamics within the economic context. Methodologically, the dissertation develops three validated codebooks for analyzing media and political agendas on international trade relations. Societally, the dissertation provides implications for journalists and political actors in conveying the complexity of EU–China trade relations.