The Media and Political Representation in EU Politics: Legitimisers or Discreditors?

Abstract

Information and communication are vital elements of democratic governance empowering citizens to participate and exert democratic control. While this is true for every democratic political system, it is of particular relevance in the European Union given the growing salience and public contestation of EU issues in public opinion. The impact of EU decisions has, especially in the context of the eurozone crisis, become increasingly (and painfully) evident for the citizens in the EU. This growing public awareness of the relevance and consequences EU decisions has also led to a greater demand for public explanation and justification of EU policy-making. In today’s ‘audience democracy’ (B. Manin), it is mainly the media that provide information on politics and thus act as a relais between political representatives and the citizens. They provide political representatives a platform to communicate their political and representative claims, behaviour and decisions and to subject them to the verdict of the people. At the same time, the media are not just a mouthpiece of political representatives, but relatively free in selecting what news they deem worthy of covering and how they report on it. As a result, the media have the power to support, challenge – or even ignore - political representatives in EU affairs and thus to legitimise, but also to delegitimise EU governance. Against this background, the panel seeks to explore the relationship between political representation and the media in EU politics both at the EU and at the domestic level.

Title	Details
Politics without Parliaments? Parliaments in EU Politicization through National Media	View Paper Details
Bad Press? Parliamentary representatives, EU affairs and the media	View Paper Details
Online Euroscepticism: an amplification of the negativity bias of political news?	View Paper Details
A Democratic Mirage? Newspaper Coverage of the European Parliament and Its Influence on Public Opinion	View Paper Details
The EU’s Single Face or Many Faces? Europeanized Media Coverage from a Network Perspective	View Paper Details