Mémoire
| Résumé : | The aim of this article is to construct a framework of analysis for an online-mediated public sphere belonging to the European Union. This requires a background showing the limited renderings of the Union’s present online communication. Serving the purpose of theoretical comparison, the contemporary political demand for populism is understood as conceptual nemesis to European supranational governance. The paper starts off with an outline of the multiple theoretical and factual definitions of populisms, and proceeds to analyze the content of populist messages as an analogy for the inducements to citizen’s dissatisfaction with European regional integration. This investigation uncovers the strong rejection of elitist and technocratic functioning, and a need for the integration of citizen feedback. The article proceeds with attention to online systems as a space that displays the limits of EU legitimation attempts, and that could become as a well a sphere to accommodate for the communicative requirements European citizens make of the Union. In recent political developments, social media have played an increasing role in facilitating political participation, and populist interests, with their regressive inhibitions, have been able to profit from these technological changes by making political use of online spaces. The European Union seems to display rather exclusionary and uncoordinated practices. A small quantitative analysis provides empirical support for the hypothesis that the European Parliament benefits less from the positive effect on trust derived from citizen’s internet consumption than an alternative political institution does, here national parliaments. The paper concludes with some ideas for a European online public sphere, that would provide an alternative to populist rejections of supranationalism and compensation for the presently lacking democratic mechanisms, through inclusive transparency and constructive communication. |
