Critical perspectives on migration in discourse and communication: An introduction

While these lines were written, Taliban were conquering Afghanistan, establishing a regime of terror in the country, while concurrently provoking a wide conflict in the Western public sphere about responsibilities and consequences of this situation. More specifically, Europe witnesses a racist and xenophobic wave of discourses against a new possible escape of refugees toward Europe; presently such discourses abound in politics and the media. It is more than a truism nowadays that, in crisis-stricken Europe, there is an increasing politicization of migration, which takes place against the background and mutual overlapping of diverse crises. More specifically, migration has become a focal and quite polarizing issue in the European public sphere especially since the numbers of refugees, escaping from conflict territories of the Middle East (e. g., Syria), crossing the Mediterranean, dramatically increased starting in 2014 (Bevelander & Wodak, 2019a). The so-called “refugee crisis,” as this movement was portrayed by mainstream media and powerful political figures in Europe (Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, & Wodak, 2018), contributed to social and economic tensions (such as the Eurozone “debt crisis”) that took place in the European Union and played into Brexit that followed.

Has COVID-19 promoted or discouraged a European Public Sphere? Comparative analysis of the Twitter interactions of German, French, Italian and Spanish MEPSs during the pandemic

This comparative research analyses the political discussion through social media of the top list German, French, Italian and Spanish Members of the European Parliament during COVID-19 crisis times. Through content analysis, the article focuses on Twitter behaviours during a pandemic crisis period (March 23 to April 23, 2020). The study that analyses up to 14 (first listed MEPs) Twitter accounts and a total N of 2101 tweets looks at clarifying if the COVID-19 pandemic has promoted or discouraged the growth of a European Public Sphere. The results show that audience involvement depended on certain online conducts of the MEP rather than on his or her constant activity. Those behaviours produced as well that the COVID-19 debate was mostly restricted to the political elite, who neither allow European civil society to take part in the discussion or communicate to the general public with the aim of shaping a European Public Sphere.

Europe in local news

Local newspapers are rarely in the focus of research on the European public sphere. However, due to their various democratic functions, they should not be neglected and may help to build a European public sphere. This article presents the results of an in-depth study of local newspapers by asking: a) How and to what extent can local newspapers contribute to the construction of a European public sphere by Europeanisation of the local public through reporting on the EU? b) Which factors have an effect on how local newspapers report on EU topics? This paper synthesises theories and models of the European public to develop hypotheses, which are then tested in interviews with six local German journalists. It finds that local newspapers can promote the emergence of a European public sphere and that news factors, resources, individual attitudes and editorial frameworks do have an impact on their EU reporting.

The influence of foreign elite rhetoric: National identity, emotions, and attitudes toward austerity

How does foreign elite rhetoric affect citizens’ emotions and attitudes about austerity? In a survey experiment conducted on the online blogs of the two major Italian newspapers, participants read a fictional news article where the German Chancellor addressed Italians. Across treatments, I varied whether the message blamed or praised Italians, and whether the message focused on economic or symbolic concerns. Praise generated enthusiasm whereas blame spurred anger and anxiety. Moreover, respondents with a strong national or European identity who read a message of praise were more enthusiastic, less angry, and less opposed to austerity. Finally, people who identify strongly with the nation reacted more to economic messages whereas those who identify strongly with Europe reacted more to symbolic messages. The results suggest that rhetoric by a prominent European leader can influence citizens’ emotions and attitudes toward austerity in the emerging European public sphere.

Songea Mbano and the ‘halfway dead’ of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in memory and theatre

Debates on the relevance of repatriation of indigenous human remains are water under the bridge today. Yet, a genuine will for dialogue to work through colonial violence is found lacking in the European public sphere. Looking at local remembrance of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in the south of Tanzania and a German–Tanzanian theatre production, it seems that the spectre of colonial headhunting stands at the heart of claims for repatriation and acknowledgement of this anti-colonial movement. The missing head of Ngoni leader Songea Mbano haunts the future of German–Tanzanian relations in heritage and culture. By staging the act of post-mortem dismemberment and foregrounding the perspective of descendants, the theatre production Maji Maji Flava offers an honest proposal for dealing with stories of sheer colonial violence in transnational memory.

Comparing mass media debates in the European public sphere

The aim of this chapter is to provide background information about the political context in which the debate on the Charlie Hebdo attacks developed within the different national arenas. Besides some general political trends developing at the European level (including the financial crisis and its political consequences), Chapter 2 presents the main dimensions of political opportunities and constraints that are susceptible to explain cross-national differences in collective actors’ claiming, framing, and justifying. In particular, it zooms in on two sets of dimensions that social movement studies have considered relevant: factors that can influence public debates over migration and ethnic relations in general—i.e., national citizenship regimes—and factors which pertain more specifically to debates about Muslims and Islam in the secular public sphere—i.e., the regime addressing Church–State relations. The chapter then presents a quantitative empirical analysis of political claims-making in France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom, during the first month following the 2015 attacks. Despite substantial cross-national differences in terms of discursive and political opportunities, the analysis of the content of the debate in the European public sphere shows that most of the mass media attention was devoted to the issues of security and freedom of expression (highly visible and non-divisive issues), which triggered much less political conflict than stories about Islam, discrimination, and migration.

Facing Democratic Crisis in the EU: the New European Citizens’ Initiative Regulation

For some scholars, the possibilities for diminishing the European democratic deficit and the Union’s legitimacy crisis are intertwined with the creation of a European demos and a European public sphere, that, in turn, can create a European civil solidarity. The European citizens’ initiative, which has recently been re-regulated, was precisely designed to help to solve these problems. As we shall see, the new Regulation includes a whole series of positive technical issues that will improve the usage of the mechanism. However, the European citizens’ initiative is still far from being a popular initiative and, therefore, to contribute to diminish the perception of distance between institutions and citizens of the EU or promoting the creation of a European demos. In this vein, after an overview of the European citizens’ initiative new Regulation main innovations and weaknesses, I will present a set of measures in order to achieve a more effective development of the mechanism.

Institutional organizations’ use of social media to communicate EU policy and the emergence of a European public sphere

Cohesion Policy accounts for the European Union main investment budget and seeks to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion. While accomplishments in this field are constantly measured, European citizens are not always aware of policy’s impact and of the role the EU plays therein. This issue is relevant, as communication of social policy is central to the emergence of the European public sphere, an acknowledged condition to foster European integration.In this work we aim at advancing research on the European public sphere through an analysis of the social media communication of EU cohesion policy by ten LMAs. We build on a bottom-up construction of shared meaning structures through semi-automatic techniques of analysis and highlight three main results: first, ‘horizontal Europeanization’ takes place on social media; second, Europeanization occurs both as the spontaneous integration of shared discontent expressed by citizens, and by the institutionalization of top-down procedures of communication adopted by LMAs; Third, a cluster of topics articulated internationally and conveying a negative attitude towards the EU funding scheme suggests that, counter-intuitively, Euroskepticism seems to facilitate the building of a European public sphere.