Abstract
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.
The substantive parts of the book examine how British and German press reported on ideas about the future state of European political institutions between 2000 and 2005. Novy finds evidence for the existence of a common news agenda but argues that European Union policies and politics remain underrepresented in national news. There is also little ‘horizontal interconnectedness’ of national debates about Europe. European debates were presented from almost exclusively national perspectives in both Britain and Germany. British discourse was particularly parochial, as European issues were seen primarily through a lens of national party political conflict.
Some of Novy’s most interesting findings relate to conceptions of German national identity and the supposed development of a strong federal European orientation in the post–Second World War period. While this was present, it was far from being uncontested by right-wing media. Certainly it would be interesting to follow up on this theme in the light of the Euro crisis and the extent to which more exclusive conceptions of German identity have come to the fore. Discourse in Britain is marked by the almost complete absence of federal conceptions of Europe, with even supporters of the European project arguing on the basis of economic and political national self-interest rather than on a commitment to a European democracy or common home or shared sovereignty.
The implications of these empirical findings for the idea of a European sphere of mass-mediated publics are that such a sphere is strictly limited and flawed and this in turn has consequences for public opinion formation. Coverage of the European Union is linked explicitly to national interests, and national actors dominate discourses about European issues. The Euro crisis has meant that European actors have increasing importance for the domestic economies and politics of many European countries, and yet simultaneously public debate at least in more popular media seems to be organised around stereotypes of profligate southerners and fascist northerners. The crisis may result in bringing economies and policies closer together at the same time as splintering whatever fragile sense of shared Europeanness that had been built up, resulting in an intensification of what Novy calls Europe’s democratic predicament. It is unlikely that without a fair and just response to the crisis, the preconditions of a European public sph