par Sobotova, Alena
Référence European Consortium on Political Research (ECPR) General Conference (07-10/09/2016: Prague, Czech Republic)
Publication Non publié, 2016-09-07
Communication à un colloque
Résumé : More than a thousand of journalists are stationed in ”the capital of Europe“ to provide regular reporting about European affairs. In order to cover the EU, one needs first to make sense of it. This paper looks at the metaphors used by the journalists when speaking about the EU and its communication sphere. It is based on qualitative interviews with some 30 Brussels-based correspondents, complemented by a limited content analysis of media and blog content about correspondence from Brussels. Actions and activities of the European Union are the daily bread of Brussels correspondents. During their job, they come in touch with both material and immaterial aspects of the EU. People, places, norms or institutions they encounter in Brussels make the EU seem more tangible. The EU acquires a higher degree of concreteness in the eyes of the journalists. However, it still remains a „strange object in the making“. To get a better grasp of it, metaphors are often seen as a useful tool, as they enable comparisons with more familiar settings. From an academic point of view, studying metaphors is a powerful means for analyzing how is the European Union imagined and discursively constructed. Journalists act as intermediaries between a political sphere and its citizens. They do not only passively transfer messages from one level to another, they also create discourses and contribute to the shaping of a (European) public sphere. The way they see the European Union, its communication and their own job will most probably be reflected in the content they produce. As this paper shows, several competing conceptualizations of the EU coexist in correspondents’ discourses. In this variety, one metaphor stands out as largely consensual. It pictures Brussels (and in extension the whole EU decision-making) as a „bubble“. This points at the perceived elitism of the European project, seen as disconnected from its bases.