Insights on the social construction of Europe : patterns in the permanent state of Euro-crisis -- Europeanization, public sphere, and active citizenship -- Active citizenship and its components -- Active citizenship : policy developments at the EU level -- Engagement and participation : opportunities and challenge for the organized civil society in the EU -- Active citizenship in Italy -- Active citizenship in Turkey -- Active citizenship in the UK
The book provides an overview of key issues in the debate concerning the emergence of active citizenship in Europe. The specific focus of enquiry is the promotion of patterns of civic and political engagement and civic and political participation by the EU and the relative responses drawn by organizations of the civil society operating at the supranational level and in Italy, Turkey and the UK. More specifically, it addresses key debates on the engagement and participation of organized civil society across the permanent state of euro-crisis, considering the production of policy discourses along the continuum that characterized three subsequent and interrelated emergency situations (democratic, financial and migration crises) that have hit Europe since 2005. Active Citizenship in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of fields, including sociology, politics, European studies and international studies.
AbstractThis paper is focused on the emergence of the European public sphere debate. This discussion has become more and more prominent between scholars of European Studies who have given it both normative and empirical attention. This is due to a variety of reasons, but in particular the increase in research about the legitimacy of European integration, which has been the subject of a wide debate since at least the beginning of the 1990s. Firstly, the article critically assesses the normative arguments that have supported the development of the European public sphere, by focusing on the social, political and cultural dimensions of European integration. After having assessed this debate and underlined current challenges emerged in light of recent events (such as the euro‐crisis, the rise of euroscepticism and the rise in far right movements), the article then introduces the empirical research on the europeanisation of the public sphere, by looking at the development of an agenda that has more and more concentrated on the fragmentation and fluidity of such construct. This discussion is key to introduce the final part of the article, which focuses on the role of civil society in the broader European constituency and in the public sphere. The article highlights some of the ambiguities inherent to the current research agenda, by calling for a more comprehensive approach to study active citizenship in Europe that departs from a consideration of the NGOs activists as the main locus of analysis.
"This book combines theoretical and empirical perspectives to address three relevant issues that are marking the European communicative landscape: the role of media and journalism in shaping the European debate, the function of public communication in promoting institutional activities and the implications of processes of inclusion to and exclusion from the Public Sphere. This volume offers a timely reflection on the communicative arenas which are structuring the discourse on Europe and its future." "Situated in a timely debate and uniquely giving well-grounded empirical evidence, this book targets primarily post-graduate students and scholars in social sciences who are working on European Integration issues. At the same time, the book is relevant to those actors studied in the different pieces of research, in particular European institutions, media groups and NGOs."--Jacket
Abstract This article investigates media representations of the European financial crisis in Greece and Italy. We study the Euro crisis as an 'emergency situation' with domino effects, where media played a central role in shaping communication practices at the national level as well as between the two countries. Drawing upon vertical and horizontal dynamics of Europeanization, we map the convergences and divergences in media discourses that surround the period 2011–2015. In doing so, we elaborate a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles focusing, in particular, on the themes of austerity and the fragmentation of Europe. Our argument suggests that national public spheres in times of transnational crisis become increasingly nationalized; yet under certain circumstances such as when the supranational infrastructure is the target of blame, they converge, opening the path toward a transnational discursive dialogue.
Received 09 Dec 2016, Accepted 09 Dec 2016, Published online: 09 Jan 2017 ; This special issue focuses on the emergence of different forms of civic and political activism in Turkey. In doing so, we have taken into account different components of active citizenship and looked more specifically into the development of civic and political forms of activism that bridge the realms of conventional and non-conventional participation.
This article examines the European Capital of Culture programme in relation to its success in sustaining a sense of European cultural identity. This is done by examining the case study of Liverpool 2008. The study is conducted by combining a discourse analysis of a sample of articles of four British newspapers (two regional newspapers and two national newspapers) published in 2008 with interviews conducted with eight journalists in 2012. This research argues that the European Capital of Culture programme is a way in which a city can adopt a sustainable European cultural identity. There are a number of cultural factors that lead to this; some of the most prominent include visual discourse, the degree to which the community embraces the programme, the creation of desirable venues and the adoption of long-term cultural activities, festivals and schools. The analysis underlines that the city of Liverpool still adopts a cultural identity closely associated with the EU programme.
