THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC SPHERE IN THE EUROPEAN BROADCASTING SPACE

The European Public Sphere in the European Broadcasting Space Does the European public sphere exist in European television? Flora Anna Retfalvi PhD in Political Science Recently, as communicating Europe gained importance, a wide academic debate on the EU, its democratic legitimacy and its communicative efforts has risen. The majority of the scientific literature written about EU communication is focused on the concept of the “European public sphere”, which generally refers to the place where public opinion takes form through the discussion of questions, political issues and decisions and also where political power is placed under scrutiny. This research, besides discussing the mainstreams of the European public sphere(s) and summarizing and updating the ongoing debate over its existence/nature, primarily aims to address two additional aspects: on one hand it seeks to provide insight to the main communication channels and dynamics of information-exchange within the European network of journalists, news-agencies and television broadcasters—for this a qualitative method was used and interviews were conducted with journalists, editors and broadcasters. On the other hand it aims to monitor and measure the perception of European and Europeanized news on national (public) television channels with regard to the European institutions’ role in agenda setting, the impact of trust, informedness, language, diversity of news, independence and the channels’ ownership. Quantitative methods were used and we have designed graphs and diagrams using raw data from Eurobarometer. The outcomes measure how much general opinion on informedness, image of the EU, trusting the EU institutions and feeling like a citizen reflect the main characteristics of the European public sphere summarized in this research: knowledge, identity, we-feeling, legitimacy, participation and democracy. By comparing these outcomes with the requirements of an existing European public sphere, we can see that media, especially television, contribute to some of the main characteristics of a strong European public sphere, namely to a common knowledge; a European identity; a we-feeling and it also legitimates the EU by increasing trust in citizens. Although we agree with the academic mainstream of the Europeanization of national public spheres, we believe that it will never result in a truly united European public sphere due to numerous influencing elements also described in this research.