Media Attention for CJEU Case Law: Measurement, Data Collection, and Analysis of Case Salience Data

Abstract

Newspapers as the main media of political coverage continue to be primary outlets for reports and opinions on collectively binding decisions. Following a quantitative research strategy, this chapter introduces a new methodological approach that allows us to systematically capture media attention and public salience of court decisions. It provides insight into a new dataset for newspaper coverage of more than 4,000 CJEU decisions in eight EU quality newspapers. The chapter describes the data collection process, the structure of the data, and the opportunities for quantitative analysis. Moreover, it emphasizes the general applicability of this methodological approach for a large number of court cases across a longer time period. The collected data offers new insights into media attention to CJEU cases and various opportunities for future analysis. The contribution also reflects on limitations, strengths, and weaknesses of this quantitative approach of studying the CJEU, compared to other approaches presented in the volume.