Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: At the heart of most academic and political debates regarding the future of the European Union lie three key ideas: openness and transparency; citizens’ participation in the decision-making process; and democratic legitimacy. Scholars and EU policy-makers have advocated the use of new media, particularly the Internet, in the democratising process of the EU.This article focuses on the top-down aspect of the online European public dialogue and the opportunities that the EU’s public communication strategy offers to citizens for involvement in shaping the Union’s political nature.Following a ‘multi-method’ approach for the gathering of empirical data, the Internet’s role in the EU’s public communication strategy is examined here from four aspects: the European Commission’s public communication policies (document analysis); the Commission’s implementation of its online policies (website analysis); their impact on key Internet audiences (user survey); and the views of policy-makers (semi-structured interviews with senior Commission officials).
Author: Asimina Michailidou
Institution: University of Bristol
Language: English
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Award: G841499813
OpenAlex ID: W1519862482