Britain and Germany Imagining the Future of Europe: National Identity, Mass Media and the Public Sphere

摘要

Received wisdom has it that the economic and political integration of Europe via the European Union in the post-Second World War period has not been matched by the creation of a shared democratic identity. This is often referred to as a communication deficit or a democratic deficit. A truly democratic Europe is not possible according to this argument because there is no European public sphere where citizens can meet, discuss and form opinions. Scholars wishing to find evidence of the existence of a fledgling European public sphere tend to have given up on the idea of trans-European media institutions and now look for signs of 'Europeanization' of national discourses (often labouring under the misapprehension that there are homogeneous national discourses). Novy sets the condition for the existence of a European public as (1) the simultaneous communication of the same European issues in different national media systems and (2) the discourse between national publics that include common reference points, relevant information from other states and the presence of non-national actors. This is public sphere 'light' as it does not require the Europeanised national publics to think of itself as a public. Some would argue that this light version is so light that such a situation even if it did exist could hardly be classed as a public sphere in a Habermasian sense.