Social Media and European Politics: New Issues of Power and Legitimacy in the Digital Era

Abstract

This panel collects empirical and conceptual insights into the consequences and effects that online news and social media have on EU politics. Bringing together scholars from the fields of media and communication, political science and political sociology, we examine the many paths through which Internet-based media are potentially transforming power and political legitimacy in the European Union: How are social media impacting on the public communication dynamics and power relations between political actors, journalists, citizens and organised civil society? Do social media amplify the nationally-confined, political elite-oriented scope of the EU public sphere, or do we instead find an amplification of the establishment-driven EU discourse in the social media sphere? What are the implications, in either case, for the role and normative status of the political public sphere in European politics? To address these pressing issues regarding the role of social media in European politics, we bring together scholarly works from the fields of public sphere theory; political networks; Euroscepticism; political activism and social movements; and audience studies. The main argument behind such a pluri-dimensional and multi-disciplinary approach is that social-media driven/generated shifts in power relations occur not only within the politics-making process but also the public sphere/communication process of politics. The effects on or implications for the former of power shifts occurring in the latter dimension may not be immediately observable or obvious, but our understanding of them is crucial if we are to accurately capture and explain the role of social media in politics. Thus far, research has focused primarily on the utilitarian dimension of social media (use of social media in political marketing/election campaigns or civil society networking and mobilization) or on the quality of political debates in the digital sphere, or on the search of a falsely linear causal link between social media-enabled mobilization and change in policy or government structures. In all these instances, the reality of the social/digital media sphere has been found lacking, compared to the normative expectations that have accompanied the digital public sphere since the appearance of the Internet three decades ago. What we argue here is that it is possible to observe changes in communication power (for example, empowerment of marginalised ‘voices’ through their increased visibility and networking capacities on social media) that cannot immediately be linked to political power shifts but which nevertheless change the dynamics of political public discourse (and thus of politics) in a fundamental, possibly long-lasting, manner. The four papers of this panel highlight different dimensions of the interplay between elite actors, online media and the EU citizenry-public. Drawing on different theoretical, empirical and disciplinary perspectives, each paper reflects on how social media contribute to the transformation or preservation of power relations within the European public sphere, by focusing on real social practices of digital political communication: how social media are used; what is being said through them and by whom; and what impact (if any) this mode of public interaction has on EU politics and the legitimization of the EU polity.

Title	Details
#refugeeswelcome: Social Media and the Communication Power Balance in the European Public Sphere	View Paper Details
Extreme Right online networks and discourses of opposition to the EU in Central and Eastern Europe	View Paper Details
Politicizing Europe: the Twitter debate during the 2015 Spanish general elections	View Paper Details
Transnational Citizen Engagement through Social Media: The Factual, the Ideological, and the Moral Style	View Paper Details