Approaching the Communicative Construction of Europe: Cultures of Political Discourse, European Public Sphere and the Euro Crisis

Abstract

Based on a 12-year long project, this book demonstrates the contested character of the communicative construction of Europe. It does so by combining an investigation of journalistic practices with content analysis of print media, an examination of citizens' online interactions and audience studies with European citizens. Cover; The Communicative Construction of Europe; Contents; List of Tables; List of Figures; Series Preface; 1: Introduction; Our research questions; Some basic concepts; An overview; Acknowledgement; 2: Approaching the Communicative Construction of Europe: Cultures of Political Discourse, European Public Sphere and the Euro Crisis; 2.1 Theorising the European public sphere: from functional legitimation to communicative construction; 2.2 Cultures of political discourse: explaining the multi-segmented European public sphere. 2.3 The euro crisis: rethinking legitimation as communicative construction3: Journalistic Practices: National and European Cultures of Political Discourse; 3.1 National cultures of political discourse: journalistic practices of nationalisation; National embedding; Transnational contextualisation; Hierarchisation; Routinisation of the transnational; Horizons of information seeking; Doing nation in journalistic practices; 3.2 Stratification-related cultures of political discourse: transnational patterns of addressing audiences; The analyst; The ambassador; The reporter; The caterer. 3.3 Imagined audiences: transnational modes of addressing4: Representing Europe in the Press:The Multi-segmented European Public Sphere; 4.1 The European public sphere: stability in times of crisis; Vertical Europeanisation; Horizontal Europeanisation; European identification; 4.2 The ambassador: representing the idea of European middle-class audiences; 4.3 The Financial Times: representing Europeans elite audiences; 4.4 The European public sphere: a plateau of multi-segmented Europeanisation; 5: Citizens' Online Engagement:The Euro Crisis in Online Forums. 5.1 The political web across Europe: national segmentation and transnational websites5.2 Online practices: relation- and issue-oriented interactions on Europe; Relation-oriented interactions; Issue-oriented interactions; 5.3 Online forums: national hyperlinks and transnational constructions; 6: Appropriating Europe: Communication Repertoires, Citizens' European Public Connections and the Euro Crisis; 6.1 Europeanisation of media audiences: a European citizen audience; 6.2 Political communication repertoires: ranges and dominances. 6.3 European public connections: centred, noticing and multi-perspectiveNoticing European public connection; Centred European public connection; Multi-perspective European public connection; 6.4 The euro crisis: activating European public connections; Relatedness and activation; Intensification and extension of political communication repertoires; 7: Challenging Europe:Understanding and Solving the Euro Crisis; 7.1 Understanding the euro crisis: perplexity, anxiety and speculations; Perplexity: grasping the euro crisis; Anxiety: worrying about the future.