The European Public Sphere: Myth,Reality or Aspiration?

Abstract

The discussion about the public sphere only began to have significant relevance within the setting of the European Union in the middle of the 1990s when a growing degree of attention was directed towards European integration and the role of national and transnational media in providing thrust for it. Since then, the notion of the public sphere has been seen as a central feature of European democracies, shaping the coherence of political systems and decision-making processes. There has also been a tendency in the literature to perceive the European public sphere (EPS) as having positive effects on the EU by endowing it with legitimacy and providing a space where its institutions and leaders can be made more transparent and accountable. What is disputed throughout this scholarship is the possibility of creating an overarching European public sphere that would act as a transnational discursive space uniting various communication fluxes and actors from all strata of society. However, the answers provided by scholars for this puzzle are at most ambiguous or undecided and seem to be torn between viewing the EPS as aspiration, myth or reality.

Keywords

EU European public sphere discourse communication Europeanisation

The discussion regarding the public sphere only began to have significant relevance within the setting of the European Union in the middle of the 1990s when a growing degree of attention was directed towards European integration and the role of national and transnational media in providing thrust for it (Curran, 1993; Eriksen and Fossum, 2000; Habermas, 1998; 2000; Schlesinger, 1999; Schlesinger and Kevin, 2002; Van de Steeg, 2002). Since then, the notion of the public sphere has been seen as a central feature of European democracies, shaping the coherence of political systems and decision-making processes. Within the transnational space fostered by the European Union, scholars – political theorists, sociologists and political scientists – have argued that the emergence or presence of a coherent and unified public sphere would create various avenues through which citizens could have their voices heard by the Union's decision makers. This aspiration has been based on the assumption that equal and open access to public debate fostered by a European public sphere (EPS) could enhance the EU's transnational democracy and further its collective identity formation processes. Thus, contestation through public debate within the EPS could compel the political authority to explain and justify its actions and policies towards the public.

The four books reviewed in this article perceive the European public sphere as having positive effects on the EU by endowing it with legitimacy and providing a space where supranational institutions and their leaders can be made transparent and accountable. This can be seen as symptomatic for the present state of the wider debate on the existence and nature of the EPS. Hence, most questions regarding the possibility and desirability of a European public sphere have largely been settled, pointing towards a consensus that the EPS can foster the development of transnational democracy in Europe and mitigate the EU's democratic deficit. In doing so, scholars have equated the EPS with a system of overlapping national public spheres which is held together by transnational media discourse. The intrinsic value of these books derives from the fact that they employ state of the art theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of the EPS, which can be seen as resulting from a process of critical reflection of the field as a whole – three of them incorporating the findings from overarching research projects funded by the EU. However, in normatively acknowledging the value of a European public sphere this literature shares a number of weaknesses: for example, ignoring other significant actors in the EPS in favour of the media; bracketing the other functions that the public sphere can play; or concentrating solely on quality media outlets to the detriment of social media and other internet sources. In what follows, the article will detail the arguments developed in the literature and within the four books reviewed for the necessity for a European public sphere, highlighting in the next two sections the different ways in which the EPS is conceptualised together with its shortcomings. The final two sections of the article provide an outline of the empirical cases analysed in the four volumes with a focus on further directions for research.

Aspiring towards a European Public Sphere

Whatever view they may hold regarding the nature and form of the European public sphere, most scholars argue that such a transnational space would have added benefit for the furthering of European integration, while if it already exists in any form its functions should be enhanced. It embodies the democratic ideals and values on which the European Union was predicated, and harbours the potential of internally legitimising the EU's polity. It grants legitimacy to the EU's efforts to promote universal principles around the world such as peace, prosperity and respect for human rights. Moreover, the existence of a strong EPS could help in mitigating the EU's deep democratic deficit. In making such claims scholars draw to a large degree on Jürgen Habermas' views on the public sphere. Hence, one of the profound shortcomings of the literature reviewed here is that although it takes into account other theoretical perspectives on the public sphere – such as those developed by Craig Calhoun (1993), Nancy Fraser (2007), Charles Taylor (2004), Andrew Linklater (2007) or Kate Nash (2007) – it just hand picks those elements that serve the goal of portraying the EPS as a necessity. In its classic form developed by Habermas (1989; 2000; 2001), a transnational public sphere contributes to the functioning of multi-level governance which could foster democracy and thus make decision-making processes more accountable and transparent for the general public. Although in reality the EPS is imperfect and far from the ideal articulated by Habermas, it is still desirable due to the fact that it links individuals to multi-level governance through free access to discourse. It also facilitates the wide spread of discursively formed normative notions of democracy throughout European societies. The European Union has the potential of offering and promoting different institutional fora and fluxes of communications where groups that are usually marginalised within the nation state can voice their interests and concerns.

Fraser offers a more stylised version of the argument, positing that the internal divisions within the public sphere manage the tension between ‘normative legitimacy and political efficacy’ of social action (Fraser, 2007, p. 7). Consequently, only decisions that are bottom up – in that they derive from public discourse – and that yield practical democratic results are considered to be legitimate within the public sphere, and binding for society. By seeking public legitimacy for political decisions the public sphere alters power relations significantly. Political elites become more constrained to enter the public arena and open their judgements to the scrutiny of individuals. This puts more and more emphasis on the need to foster open public debate which has norm-giving power bestowed on it by a certain moral community of the willing. To be more precise, the emphasis on public debate is built on the idea that everyone is entitled to take part in it, the rationale of ‘the more the better’ applying in this case. However, the public sphere should not be understood as an intentional political actor which shapes the political agenda. It is both the context in which society meets politics and part of the process through which public debate shapes political decisions. Adopting a more normative variant of this argument, Thomas Risse (2010, p. 108) posits that the role of the public sphere is to inform citizens and monitor and critically evaluate the government. Thus, through the politicisation of issues within the European public sphere individuals gain the ability to influence political decisions.

The four books build on both Habermas' and Fraser's understandings of the public sphere, highlighting the fact that democracy in the EU is intrinsically linked to the imperative of open public debate within the EPS. What seems to be missing throughout this literature is an emphasis on the whole spectrum of actors that participate in such public debates, the focus being mostly on the role of the media. The main reasons for this might reside in the actual claims regarding the nature of the EPS, whose existence has for a long time been the subject of intense debate. In order to assert the validity of the need to identify or construct an EPS, scholars working in this area have in the last decade bracketed or ignored the question of whether a European public sphere could ever exist. Moreover, they have acknowledged that the EPS is a space inherently different from that of the nation state and that it must be studied accordingly by looking at how transnational communication fluxes interlink. Hence, the convergence of national media discourse on various European topics seems to have become sufficient evidence for the need to theorise and develop the EPS. In doing so, these scholars downplay other relevant actors such as organised civil society, stakeholders or epistemic communities, and the subsequent roles that the EPS might play in relation to them: social learning (Calhoun, 1993), civilising impacts (Linklater, 2007) or cosmopolitan justice (Fraser, 2007; Held, 1995). The link between the public sphere and public action is also under-specified and assumed to be driven by the discourse created by the media.

Nonetheless, older contributions to the debate surrounding the EPS tend to be more inclusive, acknowledging that within the EPS communication cannot be separated from the social, political or cultural backgrounds in which it resides. For example, the editors of The European Union and the Public Sphere recognise that communicative processes entail not only the transfer of discourses but also the creation of meaning structures, be they social, political or cultural (Fossum and Schlesinger, 2007, p. 10). Transnational communication, on the other hand, gives way to the production of discourses and meanings which evade the constraints imposed by centres of power located within nation states. Through this it promotes several mechanisms that drive forward democratisation. The European public sphere has often been described as being ‘fragmented, polymorphous, polyphonic and even anarchistic’, as Eriksen highlights (Fossum and Schlesinger, 2007, p. 27). Forms of transnational communication within Europe provide avenues where different national or regional actors can meet and become entangled in democratic processes of contestation or consensus formation. Second, in Habermas' (1989) classic theory, communication needs to be institutionalised in order to foster a democratic public sphere where citizens could freely and equally interact with politics. Two main such forms of institutionalised communication are taught to coexist in reality: mediated communication (Gripsrud, 2009, p. 210) and regulative communication (Koçan, 2008, p. 24).

In comparison to the other three books reviewed, Cristiano Bee and Emanuela Bozzini's edited volume, Mapping the European Public Sphere: Institutions, Media and Civil Society puts greater emphasis on regulative communication. Regulative communication is related to creating a culture open to consensus achieved through free and equal access to public debates. In this sense, Trenz (Bee and Bozzini, 2010, p. 26) argues that the European public sphere is a space ‘in which particular information is distributed, issues and policies made transparent, positions and claims are staked and old and new divisions are demarcated’. It is an environment that through its own nature calls on actors and encourages them to accept transformations that are suitable to them all. The inner workings of the European Parliament seem to reflect the regulative potential of European communication, where consensus rather than political compromise and conflict is the modus operandi with which MEPs act.

Mediated communication within the European public sphere requires the construction of various patterns of circulation through which discourses can overcome traditional national borders. While within the state the public sphere can play a significant role through its agenda-setting powers, the EPS tends to lie equally at the periphery of each of the member states. At least in theory, this positioning of the EPS facilitates deeper processes of public legitimation because transnational discourses created here are in a larger degree protected from the interference of political interests (Risse, 2010). For example, in weak and young democracies, such as those of the new Central and European states, the majority of the media systems have been used as tools for political propaganda by the parties in power, decreasing the public legitimacy-granting role of the public sphere (Balabanova, 2011).

Throughout The Making of a European Public Sphere (Koopmans and Statham, 2010) both theoretical and empirical contributions seem to point to the idea that the media could have an upward effect on the standards of democracy within the European public sphere. Through mediatisation, European issues come to be present in various national debates, fostering and creating new platforms of negotiation for ideas and different standpoints that are key to a democratic system. Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham (2010, ch. 2) contend that coverage by the media also provides citizens with the necessary information that would allow them to construct reflexive opinions regarding European views of politicians, and evaluate them. As individuals in the EU have few chances to get in contact with decision makers at the supranational level, news reports and articles supplied by the media fill this knowledge gap, mediating the interactions between society and politics, while Pfetsch, Adam and Eschner (Koopmans and Statham, 2010, ch. 6) suggest that EU politicians may also benefit from media coverage by monitoring and evaluating the impact of their policies in the settings of the member states. Moreover, mediatisation facilitates EU decision makers and administrators in initiating policies and opening them to public debate, although the media can at times assume a more active role in setting the agenda or legitimising different patterns of behaviour and rules within the political sphere (Trenz, 2009, p. 53).

Against this background, it is the role of the media to bring individuals closer to the Union, as politicians have alienated the public from the EU by speaking only infrequently about the Union in technocratic terms. Simultaneously, this could lead to a transfer of legitimacy through the construction of narratives from the supranational level to the national level and back. Lastly, it could contribute to the degree of appreciation that individuals share towards the EU. Since legitimacy is dependent upon the accessibility to and the accountability, transparency and effectiveness of public debates and decision-making processes, more discourse regarding the Union in national public spheres might prompt individuals to increase their trust in the EU. Furthermore, EU governance presented to, debated and understood by European citizens might provide a voice for people who are normally marginalised at the national level (Bee and Bozzini, 2010).

Definition

The classical liberal definition of the public sphere frames it as ‘the space between government and society, in which private individuals exercise formal (election of governments) and informal (pressure of public opinion) control over the state’ (Curran, 1993, p. 36). In contrast to this traditional view, almost fifteen years ago Habermas (1998, p. 306) argued that a European public sphere is ‘a political sphere which enables citizens to take positions at the same time on the same topics of the same relevance’. Acknowledging or departing from this definition the four volumes examined here offer four main conceptualisations of the European public sphere. First, drawing on Habermas' theory the editors of The European Union and the Public Sphere focus on the importance of the constant interactions and negotiations between society and individuals, seen as part of a historically developed Europe. According to Fossum and Schlesinger (2007, p. 7), the historical development of European states is considered to be marked by the communication processes that have linked various communities to their polities.

Second, the EPS has been framed as a space where public opinion can be formed and individuals can have informed equal and free access to public debate. In Mapping the European Public Sphere both Van de Steeg and Statham hold that institutionalised structures and procedures that facilitate individuals' participation are crucial to the development of such a space. Through this inclusive space, citizens can be informed and form coherent opinions about politics that could have an influence on decision-making processes. However, studies that assume this view of the public sphere conclude that the EPS departs in a large degree from the ideal of having institutional structures and democratic processes that nurture public debate and common will formation at the European level (De Vreese and Arnold, 2011; Fuchs, 2011). Instead, more ad hoc and fragmented public spheres are created by different transnational networks in Europe, which often focus their discourse on a limited number of issue areas. Thus the EPS is positioned at the intersection of the communication processes spawned by transnational networks which have different institutionalised forms of open public debate in various fora.

Third, the appearance of European issues and discussion that concern Europe in various public debates within the EU has been presented as indicative for the formation of a European public sphere. This perspective is widely shared by all the four books in question and the broader literature (Cerutti, 2010; Fraser, 2007; Gripsrud and Weibull, 2010; Koçan, 2008; Kratochvíl et al., 2011; Linklater, 2007; Lucarelli et al., 2010; Telo, 2010). According to Koopmans and Statham (2010), theoretically this approach sustains the view that the EPS is the result of the overlap between various national public spheres which present different degrees of Europeanisation. Within the same volume, Koopmans, Erbe and Meyer (Koopmans and Statham, 2010, p. 63) agree that in so far as Europeanisation is present, we should identify the existence of the same themes or similar frames in European national public spheres at any point in time. Stronger forms of Europeanisation would imply that patterns of interpretation and structures of meaning are employed across national public debates, while ideas expressed here should address and be tailored to as many audiences from other public spheres as possible. Finally, the majority of scholarship has tried to evaluate the EPS empirically by analysing references to European issues that are produced by the media (Bondebjerg and Madsen, 2009; Bruggemann and Kleinen-von Konigslow, 2009; Eder, 2010). Within the books reviewed, the Europeanisation of national public spheres has been empirically studied by looking at the following aspects: claims made within the media by different actors (Koopmans and Statham, 2010; Risse, 2010) – European, national, civil society and the general public – the analysis of frames and standpoints employed by the media (Fossum and Schlesinger, 2007; Risse, 2010) and interviews with journalists and representatives of European media institutions (Bee and Bozzini, 2010; Koopmans and Statham, 2010).

Risse acknowledges that there is considerable fragmentation within the common European public sphere, but at the same time national public spheres are closely linked together. They create the space where identities and community feeling are enacted, and where individuals come into contact with discourse regarding Europe (Risse, 2010, p. 107). Consequently, throughout A Community of Europeans? the EPS is explored through the avenue of Europeanisation and transnationalisation, rather than that of searching for a common language, community or European media system as prerequisites for a public sphere. As people do not have too much contact with European issues, the media play a crucial role in the transnationalisation of the national public spheres. Paraphrasing Alexander Wendt's famous phrase, Risse argues that the ‘public sphere is what the media make of it’ (Risse, 2010, p. 114), whereby they play a crucial role in endowing public debate with legitimacy and reflexivity:

[c]ommunication through the media constitutes second-order observations that enable participants as well as audiences to not only observe themselves and their contributions but also the observations of others and their construction of reality. By mirroring and communicating social conflicts, the media contribute to social order in a given society (Risse, 2010, p. 117).

It is quite straightforward that the latter two approaches discussed assume that within the European public sphere the media seem to play the role of coagulating different national or supranational discourses, making them available to both the general public and decision makers. Hans-Jörg Trenz (2009, p. 56) has named this process in which the EPS is mostly accounted for through the activity of the media as ‘European public sphere light’. The strength and development of the EPS are here linked to the way in which European issues or actors are presented in national debates through the media. Even in this ‘light’ form, the EPS plays an important role in building a bridge between individuals and politics. Both in Mapping the European Public Sphere (ch. 7) and The Making of a European Public Sphere (ch. 5) Statham's contributions reveal that journalists have the ability to put significant constraints on European institutions, pressuring them to be more open or transparent and engage in public debates with European citizens. In this way the media in EU member states translate to their audiences the conflicts and agreements that affect the ways in which decisions are adopted in Brussels. However, in the absence of transnational media and a European demos that could be addressed, a number of scholars have doubted whether the EPS – light or Europeanised – can really have a constraining effect on politicians with positive outcomes (Fuchs, 2010; Gripsrud and Weibull, 2010; Meyer, 2010; Olausson, 2010). For their part, journalists, when asked about European identity or the existence of a European public sphere, have been keen to underscore that such concepts are merely theoretical or political constructions which they do not perceive in their day-to-day activities. Simultaneously, journalists seem to be in favour of the creation of an EPS where the media could drive forward public debate and hold decision makers accountable, as Lauristin finds in Fossum and Schlesinger's edited volume (2007, p. 399).

Europeanisation of National Public Spheres

In order to give weight to the possibility of a European public sphere, during the last ten years most of the literature has pointed to the idea that the EPS is not a single coherent space but is formed by the overlap between various national public spheres. Even more, there is little evidence that the EPS resembles in any way the public sphere of the nation state, due to the peculiarities of multi-level governance characterised by continuous power negotiations between member states and the supranational level. The lack of unity within the EPS was correlated with the absence of a European demos or a European identity (De Vreese and Boomgaarden, 2006; Eriksen and Fossum, 2000; Schlesinger, 1999; Schlesinger and Kevin, 2000; Trenz, 2004). In The Making of a European Public Sphere de Beus (p. 32) suggests that trying to identify a European public sphere (similar to that of the nation state) at the transnational level will be futile because a European demos is more likely to appear within national borders where social and political life is infused and transformed by European issues. An EPS viewed in these terms would not result in the dissolution of national borders or of different cleavages present within societies, but would encourage a dialogue where various traditions, languages, cultures, etc. are given equal say. According to Lauristin's contribution in The European Union and the Public Sphere (p. 397), the new Central and Eastern European member states have been showing more readiness for the development of a public sphere defined in these terms because they perceive it as a chance to take part in the European discursive space as equals, where their cultural and national specificities are cherished and encouraged. The spread of the same European issues and frames through different national public spheres has been considered to be evidence of the existence of such a European public sphere. Both theoretically and empirically it is commonly accounted for through the process of Europeanisation which I shall go on to discuss.

The concept of Europeanisation captures the extent to which European discourse has extended from the supranational arena to the national public spheres in member states and beyond them. To be clearer, it traces and assesses the way in which European issues are discussed within national public spheres, and through transnational communication flows come to travel from one domestic public debate to another. Furthermore, Koopmans and Statham (2010, p. 43) maintain that national public spheres become Europeanised if the discourses within these spaces evade the boundaries of certain national debates and assume transnational, European points of view. The minimal requirement for the presence of Europeanisation is that the public already is or becomes aware of the European dimension of the discourses created and circulated within national public spheres. On the other hand, the optimum required or the rule of thumb (Bee and Bozzini, 2010) for a Europeanised public debate involves participating in a shared debate on European issues which are discussed using roughly the same criteria as in other national public spheres.

The Making of a European Public Sphere draws on Statham and Koopmans' (2009) earlier work and presents two models of Europeanisation: vertical and horizontal. Vertical Europeanisation processes deal with the privileging within national public spheres of European approaches promoted by Brussels and its institutions. Communicative processes could here be either top-down – where EU actors intervene in national debates – or most commonly bottom-up – in which European issues are adopted by national actors. The top-down variant need not be mediated, as institutions have the ability to distribute their own information to citizens and manage their interactions with the general public. On the other hand, horizontal Europeanisation considers the communication fluxes between different national public spheres. Koopmans and Statham (2010, p. 38) argue that a stronger variant of Europeanisation takes place when issues from another European state are reported and European actors or policies are clearly identified. Instances of diplomatic rows between two member states or between one and an institution of the Union are examples of when the two processes described above intersect. Lonneke Van Noije (2010, p. 266) has empirically shown that such cases have received considerable attention from the media over the last two decades and have triggered considerable public debate. Conversely, instances of weak horizontal Europeanisation occur only when issues regarding the developments in other member states are merely reported in a certain national public sphere.

The Empirics behind the European Public Sphere

Mapping the European Public Sphere presents a wealth of empirical cases focused on the role of regulative communication within the EPS. Bee and Bozzini (2010, p. 10) analyse the official communicative strategy drawn up by the European Commission and argue that recently regional and local media have gained in pre-eminence in the strategy of the EU as they reach individuals across all strata of society. They underscore that the Commission has shown a considerable degree of openness to public debate within the public sphere, as a ‘good two-way communication between the citizens and public institutions is essential in a healthy democracy’ (European Commission, 2006, cited in Bee and Bozzini, 2010, p. 6). Bee (p. 85) goes on to underscore that the EU seeks to develop within the EPS a relationship with its citizens based on trustworthiness and accountability. Communication within the EPS is thus also understood by the European Commission as a tool that links institutions in Brussels with European citizens. However, this normative self-image of the EU is contradicted by the experiences of journalists interacting with the Union's institutions. Statham (p. 20) agrees with Balčytienė and Vinciōnienė's (pp. 143–4) finding that journalists have often faced difficulties caused by the general lack of audience interest in EU issues and the complexity of the information supplied by EU institutions coupled with their unwillingness to translate technical language for the understanding of the general public. The volume also presents an evaluation of the effect of the EU's communication policy on online public dialogue and debates within the public sphere.

As far as mediated communication is concerned, it has become a commonplace in media studies literature to argue that ‘the more the EU does, the more likely it is to get on the news agenda’ (Boomgaarden et al., 2010, p. 519). Most analyses of media coverage of the European Union – presented in the four books – highlight that crucial and large institutional events positively influence the Union's visibility in the media. Consequently, Kriesi, Tresch and Jochum in The Making of a European Public Sphere (p. 225) expect that when a country holds the Presidency of the Union or chairs a summit of the European Council, more news about the EU will be generated in its national public sphere. According to de Beus (p. 31), such increases in the quantity of news have the potential of constructing increased awareness over the debates around the European Union, and thus build public support or opposition for various policies. Simultaneously, Risse (2010, pp. 128–30) cites data from EUROPUB and from a research team from Humboldt University and one from the University of Bremen to show that European issues have become more visible in the last twenty years in newspaper reporting across the EU. For example, significant politicisation of the constitutional and enlargement debates led to an increase in the visibility of Europe within national public spheres, and at the same time a higher degree of conflict and polarisation (p. 147). The European Union and the Public Sphere also contains two contributions that empirically evaluate the role of the EPS in the enlargement and constitutional debates. In relation to the first debate, Heller and Renyi (p. 170) argue that the media in Western member states framed the enlargement as a potential gain for the EU, but more importantly presented the Central and Eastern European states as historically belonging to Europe. Through this the EPS contributed to the creation of a common European cause for enlargement, a precondition for further integration and expansion. Similarly, Fossum and Trenz (p. 211) suggest that the constitutional debate united European citizens in debating the future of the Union.

In The Making of a European Public Sphere Koopmans, Erbe and Meyer (p. 67) underscore that even though France, Germany and the United Kingdom make up for less than a third of the Union's population, their national media account for more than half of the claims about the EU. As such, they argue that media debates in Europe are not nationally biased inasmuch as they are influenced by the debates on the EU within these three core countries. Out of these, France seems to present the highest rate of attention to the policy views developed at the European level, while the British media tend to focus more on how the EU's approach converges with or diverges from the national interest. The extent to which a country identifies itself with the European project is important for understanding such media differences between France and Britain – support for European integration triggers a higher degree of positive visibility of EU institutions in media reports. Furthermore, Risse's empirical analyses (p. 138) point to the conclusion that the media in various national public spheres seem to be reporting European issues at the same time through roughly the same frames. Risse outlines the findings of the analysis of the Haider debate, where European newspapers presented the issues not only as being of concern to Austria and its democracy but also to the whole of Europe (pp. 143–4). The debate on enlargement presents the same characteristics as that on Haider, with regard to the creation at the same time of ‘general frames of reference and meaning structures’ across Europe (Risse, 2010, p. 150). However, in all empirical examples examined in A Community of Europeans? Risse finds that usually when European issues are discussed they are on the lips of European or EU speakers (p. 159).

Concluding Remarks and Avenues for Further Research

During the past ten years research on the European public sphere has been asking a series of relevant questions about the nature and existence of such a transnational space. The books explored in this article all point to the consensus in the literature around the idea that a coherent EPS could mitigate the EU's democratic deficit. However, the EPS should not be seen as a coherent and unified space but more a result of the overlapping between national public spheres. Europeanisation has often been applied in order to assess the EPS empirically, with a focus on the role of the media. In so far as this approach is concerned, there are a couple of shortcomings regarding the data collected from the media. First, there is a looming risk of falling into the trap of methodological nationalism, considering the nation state as the natural cauldron for a public sphere, and therefore making it hard to compare methodologies of the research projects that study the EPS (Risse, 2010, pp. 170–1). According to Bo Stråth and Ruth Wodak (2009, p. 17), in the context of the European public sphere, journalists tend to be more willing to present issues through a national perspective rather than through favouring more normative transnational concerns, usually downplaying the importance of the Union.

Second, there is a tendency to explore quality newspapers – a type of media accessible mostly to elites (informed public) – and to ignore the tabloids which have a larger audience. Quality media outlets are widely considered to be the main public vehicle for both political and social European discourse. Consequently, it is more likely that articles about the EU will be found in quality national newspapers than in local papers or tabloids. They possess their own high standards of selecting newsworthy issues and are continuously involved in processes of creation of public opinion at the EU and member-state level. Nevertheless, even within the quality media there is an underlying danger of ‘dumbing down’ discourse and public debate. Personalisation of European topics, the search for the sensational or the overwhelming presence of advertisements might derail debates into avenues that depart from rational and well-argued debate.

Finally, recent developments such as the Arab Spring, the popular revolts in Greece, Spain, Romania and Hungary, which are rooted in Europe's economic crisis, or the protests that ensued over the 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia have all hinted at the important role that social media can play in mobilising public opinion and social forces within the public sphere. According to Habibul Khondker (2011), social media were paramount to the events of the Arab Spring due to their power to mobilise social forces in the absence of other relevant actors in the public sphere such as organised civil society or stakeholders. Stephen Coleman and Josephine Spiller (2006) have also suggested that social media can have long-lasting effects on the way democracy is enacted at the European level. On the other hand, in researching the influence of online activity on the success of environmental campaigns driven by pressure groups, Neil Gavin raises important concerns regarding the ‘notion of the web as an egalitarian, democratised, alternative and separate avenue of communication for the otherwise disadvantaged’ (Gavin, 2010, p. 359). Nonetheless, future research should also focus on the way in which social media have changed the nature, possibility and desirability of a European public sphere. Scholars should also engage more directly with the whole spectrum of actors present in the EPS and highlight those which have been aided by the emergence of social media as an important transnational communication flux. For example, the first European Citizens' Initiative was registered on the 2012 Europe Day (9 May), paving the way for regular citizens to come together transnationally and influence decision making at the European level. What is interesting here is that the first ‘Fraternité 2020‘initiative (Fraternité 2020, 2012) has been organised to a large extent with the aid of social media by a series of like-minded individuals who share common European ideals and values. Unlike protests or social movements this announces the emergence of a novel method by which ordinary citizens can influence transnational politics within the European public sphere, in this way bypassing its normal actors such as the media, civil society, stakeholders or epistemic communities.

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