Suchergebnisse

1. The EU's institutional efforts to construct a public : constitution-making and the evolving European public sphere -- 2. What kind of European civil society? : the views and adaption of NGOs to the EU's constitution-making -- 3. Making Europe visible? : the spatial transformation of mass-mediated public debates -- 4. Making Europe inclusive? : the transformation of political actors' participation in public debates -- 5. Making Europe partisan? : the transformation of political party contestation in public debates over the constitution -- 6. Making Europe politicized? : French political parties' critiques and framing of the constitution in the referendum debates.

Over the past two decades, civil society has played a pivotal role in Europe, from the demise of Communist rule to the reunification of Europe, followed by the expansion of the single market to the reconstitution of democracy in the enlarged European Union. European civil society has emerged as a social space between EU governance and the citizens of the member states, populated by non-state agents claiming to represent, speak for or participate on behalf of the most varied social constituencies in EU decision making. This book consolidates European civil society research by r.

In this article, we argue for a pragmatic understanding of the role of news media and journalism not as truth keepers but as truth mediators in the public sphere. In the current debate on 'post-truth politics' the emphasis is often put on the formulation of ethical guidelines and legal solutions to regain control over 'unbound journalism' or to re-establish truth in the news media. Instead of holding journalists individually accountable for the spread of fake news, we consider truth as an unstable outcome of fact-finding, information-seeking and contestation, where journalists act as professional brokers. Journalists are not individuals that are closer to facts or more devoted to truth than others. They are rather embedded in a professional field of journalism practices that help to establish the value of information in a trusted way that becomes acceptable and convincing for the majority. Standards and procedures of journalism can therefore not be applied in a way to detect truth in an absolute way and defend it against falsehood, but to approach truth in the most reliable and acceptable way. The truth value of information then becomes the (unstable) outcome of a democratically necessary procedure of critical debate facilitated by journalists.

In this article, we explore three possible scenarios for the role of EU correspondents in a post-pandemic media landscape that is marked not only by the mainstreaming of misinformation but also by an EU regulatory turn that aims to support media in the post-pandemic era and to stamp out the culture of 'fake news'. EU correspondents are best placed to function as translators of EU technocratic and differentiated governance. Such a function is a prerequisite to critically assess the content and quality of decision-making, when demands of national EU readerships for EU news are limited and resources for quality journalism restricted. We submit that whether this function of EU correspondents will materialise in the (post-)pandemic era hinges not on their capacity to contribute to the elusive 'European public sphere' but on how the EU's action plan for the recovery and transformation of media organisations will interact with the multiple challenges journalists are already facing in the digital era. We propose three scenarios on how such an institutional settlement of EU journalism may play out: mimicry, fragmentation, and decoupling. The aim is twofold: Firstly, to set out a research agenda for empirical investigation of the EU correspondents' role in European democracy under constant transformation. And secondly, to argue normatively the case for safeguarding the independence and viability of specialist and/or transnational professional journalism bodies, even if these appear increasingly irrelevant from a commercial perspective.

In this article, we argue for a pragmatic understanding of the role of news media and journalism not as truth keepers but as truth mediators in the public sphere. In the current debate on 'post-truth politics' the emphasis is often put on the formulation of ethical guidelines and legal solutions to regain control over 'unbound journalism' or to re-establish truth in the news media. Instead of holding journalists individually accountable for the spread of fake news, we consider truth as an unstable outcome of fact-finding, information-seeking and contestation, where journalists act as professional brokers. Journalists are not individuals that are closer to facts or more devoted to truth than others. They are rather embedded in a professional field of journalism practices that help to establish the value of information in a trusted way that becomes acceptable and convincing for the majority. Standards and procedures of journalism can therefore not be applied in a way to detect truth in an absolute way and defend it against falsehood, but to approach truth in the most reliable and acceptable way. The truth value of information then becomes the (unstable) outcome of a democratically necessary procedure of critical debate facilitated by journalists.

AbstractEuropean Parliament (EP) elections have traditionally been described as 'second‐order national elections' in which campaigns are fought by national parties on national issues. We argue that the 2019 elections should instead be considered 'first‐order polity' elections. It is not EU‐level party politics or policy issues that are debated, but rather the legitimacy of the EU itself. Firstly, the EP elections have transformed into an EU 'blame game' in which national governments are punished or rewarded over their stance on European integration. Secondly, the 2019 election was about the EU's fundamental values, not only with respect to multiculturalism, but also gender equality and LGBTQ rights. Finally, these first‐order polity elections are driven in large part by traditional news and social media platforms. While this is a long way from the patterns of the early EP elections, they still fail in fulfilling the function of holding MEPs and European party groupings adequately to account.

In der Euroskeptizismus-Forschung ist bislang der Frage nach den öffentlichen und medialen Vermittlungsprozessen, über die sich europakritische Meinungen formieren und Proteste gegen die EU ausweiten, nur wenig Beachtung geschenkt worden. In diesem Artikel soll die sich wandelnde Rolle der Nachrichtenmedien als Generator demokratischer Legitimität exemplarisch am Beispiel der Nachrichtenberichterstattung zur Wahl des Europäischen Parlaments 2014 nachgezeichnet werden. Im Ländervergleich zwischen Deutschland und Groβbritannien wird untersucht, inwiefern die Europaberichterstattung durch einen systematischen Negativitätsbias geprägt wurde. Negativität als Nachrichtenwert fokussiert auf die Fehlleistungen der Politik, Polemiken, Skandale oder Krise. Damit, so wird unterstellt, untergraben die Medien das Vertrauen in die demokratische Politik und ihre Repräsentanten. Die Wirkung von Negativität kann in der Selektion, Rahmung, Verbreitung und Rezeption von EU-Nachrichten nachgewiesen werden. Auf der Grundlage standardisierter Inhalts- und Frameanalyse auf Artikel-Ebene, Sprecher-Ebene und Rezipienten-Ebene kann der Negativitäts-Bias von EU-Nachrichten unterschiedlichen Amplifikatoren (Journalisten, politischen Akteuren und Nachrichtenkonsumenten) zugeordnet und zur Legitimität der Europapolitik im Kontext von demokratischen Wahlen in Bezug gesetzt werden. Von einer Euroskeptizismus-Spirale soll in dem Sinne gesprochen werden, dass sich im Laufe der medialen Kampagne Nachrichtenangebot und Nachfrage an Negativitätskriterien anpassen und gegenseitig in der Delegitimierung des europäischen Integrationsprojekts verstärken.

Based on a pilot study of online news making and commenting in Denmark, the article discusses the relationship between online political news making and democracy. Empirical insights on the dynamics of user engagement and debates on mainstream Danish online news platforms are used to delineate the contours of the online public sphere. It is argued that the new digital media should be discussed not only as a new forum for political participation but also in relation to traditional forms of representative democracy. The analysis comprises the technical features and apps that are designed by online news providers in Denmark to facilitate the constitution of new "voice publics". How these voice publics are designed as an element of news making and news distribution and, as such, linked to the old "representative" and "attentive publics" of news consumption is investigated.

The mediatization of politics is generally explained in relation to the legitimacy requirements of the modern state and as such, it is typically confined to the national media sphere. Can we speak in any meaningful way of mediatization beyond the national? The European Union (EU), which operates under increasing legitimacy constraints and is exposed to the salience of media debates that contest its public legitimacy, is a case in point. Is the EU becoming mediatized? And what are the effects of EU mediatization? Under what conditions can the mass media become a facilitator of European integration? The issue at stake is whether the media (new and old) can have an integration function beyond the national and facilitate the building of democratic legitimacy of the European Union. We propose that the concept of mediatization offers the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to understand precisely how the interaction between the EU polity and the media unfolds and how it impacts on the process of the EU's public legitimation. First we deliver a general account of mediatization, highlighting its core definers and main points of critique that the concept has attracted. We then show how mediatization is relevant to the EU pol­ity and propose an analytical model that can capture this process empirically