The European Public Sphere – Barriers and Limitations

This short paper presents a various theoretical approaches of the European Public Sphere that emphasizes on the role on European integration and European identity. It discusses the extent to which the EU’s institutions are involved in building process of a European Public Sphere by financing a various projects. The aim of this paper is to analyze the arguments presented by various scholars who have developed the concept in the context of the EU and its policy. Furthermore, the purpose is to discuss to what extent does mass media and projects function as a European public sphere in the EU. The paper comes up with a current picture on how the EU supports the media outlets together with the projects that aim to foster the emergence of a European public sphere as well as to improve the image of the EU.

Fundació Catalunya Europa, 2012

Javnost the Public, 2008

This article aims at assessing the theoretical and empirical role of the national press in the emerging European public sphere. The study draws on Europeanisation as the emerging framework for transnational communication across European nation states. It assumes that the press itself may perform as a political actor and make a substantial contribution to Europeanisation by advocating European integration and by broadening its scope to include the perspectives of all EU member states and the EU itself. In order to discern the infl uence or role of the media-its "voice"-this study analysed the content of editorials of 28 newspapers in seven European countries along two dimensions. First, the receptiveness of the press towards European perspectives is investigated by measuring the degree to which its editorials feature European scopes. Second, the study examines newspapers' attitudes about European integration as a political project. The overall fi ndings point to a remarkable representation of European perspectives, and substantial support for EU integration, by the national press in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The newspapers in the Netherlands and Switzerland were somewhat more parochial, but still supportive. We also see that the United Kingdom (UK) media deviate substantially from these patterns. This study concludes that, in contrast with the fi ndings of earlier studies, the press must be regarded as a signifi cant agent of Europeanisation fostering transnational linkages of public debate.

European Journal of Communication, 2011

This edited volume sets out to examine the Europeanization of media discourse vis-à-vis advancing European integration and to explore its relation to political practice and the 'European democratic deficit'. The studies presented investigate patterns of communication and interaction that emerge alongside institutional and policy regulation at the EU level and these are used to draw conclusions about how conditions of Europeanization, transnationalism and globalization affect the ways democratic politics is performed.

2003

The paper argues that European integration from above must be accompanied by a Europeanisation of public communication in order to overcome its lack of legitimacy and popular involvement. It relates to the emerging scientific discussion on the Europeanisation of public spheres as a start for inquiry and presents findings on the contents and nature of public claim making and debate on European issues in Germany. The media are seen as prime actors in the public sphere that not only convey the issues of other actors in public debate but also speak in their own voice and thus possess the potential to influence the public agenda towards favourable European frames and positions. We investigate whether the media, in comparison with other actors, operate as a motor of Europeanisation or rather slow down the process. For the empirical part of the paper, we draw on data from the project "The Transformation of Political Mobilisation and Communication in European Public Spheres" (Euro...

2010

The traumatic failure of the European constitution seems to underpin doubts about a European public sphere that effectively interacts with the European Union and holds it to account. Is a European public sphere truly impossible? Has it been emerging as many social scientists have claimed – however only on the basis of more recent observations? This dissertation provides the first long-term historical analysis of a political European public sphere and its development over time. Starting out from a thorough consideration of the theoretical, conceptual and methodological innovations provided by social scientists in recent years, the study focuses on how British, French and German quality newspapers covered major European Council summits from The Hague in 1969 to Maastricht in 1991. Findings - based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of both reporting and commentary using a variety of methods - suggest that major events of European integration have long been accompanied by a vivid debate in the media. Moreover, the European public sphere underwent a notable structural transformation. The growth of a more developed European political system since the 1970s has led to a more politicised, more differentiated, more inclusive – and hence potentially more democratic – European public sphere in terms of participation in the debate and the range of issues covered. There was a notable increase in transnational communication. A discourse analysis of the commentary demonstrates changes in European identification – from a rather uniform association of Europe with progress to overcome the nation state towards a greater pluralism in European self-understanding, including Euro-scepticism, but also a sense of greater European responsibility in the post-Cold War world. The study suggests that an emerging European public sphere was much more responsive to the development of European integration than has previously been assumed.

webappl.sh.se

Although a substantial body of theoretical as well as empirical work emphasizes the role of the mass media in constructing what could serve as a political public sphere at the European level, strikingly little is known, in qualitative terms, about opinionmaking journalists' underlying views and orientations on the European integration process. The point of departure in the present paper is that one role of opinion-making journalists can be understood as that of catalysts for transnational communication despite the oft-assumed absence of an overarching collective identity at the European level. Before transnational problem-solving communication can unfold the community-shaping effects that discourse theory describes, problems first have to be identified as shared. Whether and to what extent this framing role can be performed by opinion-making journalists may be a function of the latter's interpretations of the integration process. The present study presents findings from an interview-based survey of opinion-making journalists of four Swedish daily newspapers.

Journal of Language and Politics, 2005

Javnost-The Public, 2006

JourNalists imagiNiNg the europeaN public sphere professioNal discourses about the eu News practices iN teN couNtries abstract This article aims to analyse journalists' professional imagination in connection to EU news. A special attention is paid to the variety of ideas about European public sphere that inform (or fail to inform) journalists' work. The article is based on 149 semi-structured qualitative journalist interviews conducted in the home offices of mainstream news organisations in ten European countries. The article takes up Charles Taylor's idea that public sphere belongs to the key social imaginaries of modernity and treat journalists as important carriers of these social imaginaries. These professional imaginaries are traced by looking at how journalists perceive the locus of news, how they define their professional role vis-à-vis their audience, and finally, how they would describe the political and communication problems within the EU. From this reasoning three relatively coherent lines of thought were derived: classical professionalism, secular discourse, and cosmopolitan discourse. As a conclusion the article attempts to map out these different discourses in connection to modes of political communication. The three discourses detected in the article can be seen as contemporary versions of professionalism in European news organisations. As such, they do not give much ground to assume that a European public sphere would emerge out of national journalistic cultures. Given the emergent nature of publics and public spheres, this does not mean that such practices may not be developed outside journalism. heikki heikkilä risto kuNelius heikki heikkilä is research fellow at the department of Journalism and mass communication, university of tampere;

Communications, 2006

This article aims to contribute to the discussion on the Europeanization of public spheres. It is the starting point for an investigation into the role of the media in transnational debate in Germany. The study aims to determine whether the media function as either a motor of or an obstacle to Europeanization of national public debate, compared to other actors. Drawing on empirical data from the project "The transformation of political mobilisation and communication in European public spheres" 1 (Europub.com), we analyze the communications through which political actors, civil society actors, and the media in Germany make public demands on European issues. Sources on which this investigation was built were the news and editorial section of two national quality newspapers (center-left, center-right), one tabloid and one regional newspaper in the period between 2000 and 2002. The findings show that the demands made by the media are generally more European in scope than those made by other political actors. Regarding the evaluation of EU integration and the frames that are advocated, the German press and the political elite are rather convergent.