The eu’s Legitimacy in the Eye of the Beholders

Chapter 4 – Mass Mediated Legitimacy

Mass media are the primary means of access to a European public sphere, and they are the main producers and reproducers of European issues in that sphere.

EMEDIATE⁶⁰

In this chapter, we will look at the relationship between public discourse and legitimacy, and the role of the mass media in this relationship. First, we will look at the way public discourse is mediated in modern society and the role of politicians in creating legitimacy. Secondly, whether there is a European public sphere and how the shortcomings of the print-media might play a role in this. Finally, an analysis is performed of the ways in which the mass media might influence the EU’s legitimacy deficit, but also the ways to overcome these media shortcomings.

4.1 – Mass Mediated Public Discourses

An important element in the creation of legitimacy for political institutions is the public sphere or a shared space of communication. The concept of the public sphere was made popular by Jürgen Habermas.⁶¹ The concept though has become a broad and loaded term, which although often used in the literature (e.g. EMEDIATE 2009; Thomassen and Schmitt 2004: 10), remarkably often stays undefined. Peters et al. distinguish between two approaches to the public sphere in recent research: a civic participatory approach and a public discourse approach (2005: 140-141). In short, the former focuses on the influence of individuals and groups on the policy process. For us the second approach is more important.
‘In this approach, the public sphere is interpreted as a field of communication that is accessible to mass publics. In this perspective, civic activities become part of the public sphere to the degree that they are represented in public communication, primarily in the mass media (Ibid., 140).
The two important elements are the need to communicate with a mass public, and that the primary way to do this is through the mass media. The importance of the mass media is a result of the scale of modern society. The consensus on legitimacy arises in public discourse and this discourse needs to reach a large population, certainly in the case of the EU. In this situation, the mass media have become the drivers and arenas of public discourse (Liebert and Trentz 2008: 2).

The mass media are in a unique position to enhance people’s cognitive awareness of European political processes, and, inasmuch as they function both at a mass level within and across EU member states, they are indispensible for instilling democratic practices into public life within the emerging European political order (Ibid.).

People also indicate that they think the mass media is important for them to create an opinion (Eurobarometer. In: Bursens and Baetens 2004: 7). The mass media is recognized as the source of public discourse and an important source for the creation of public opinion. The mass media is even more important with respect to international issues. This is how the EU is perceived (Peter, Semetko and De Vreese 2003: 306; Thomassen and Schmitt 2004: 9).⁶² People though are dissatisfied with the amount of information provided on the EU (Eurobarometer. In: Bursens and Baetens 2004: 7).

There is though an important fallacy that has to be addressed. From the account above one might be lead to assume that once informed people will see the light, so to say, and embrace the EU (Mak 2002: 230). This is an idealistic view of the process: the idea that once presented with the facts people will rationally make the right (democratic) choice is in the words of Stanley Fish: “contradicted by the whole of human history”.⁶³ Politicians though can and should influence the public discourse (Middelaar 1999; Siedentop 2000), but they have to take into account sentiments and opinions among the population. They cannot simply state the facts and expect people to follow rather they have to convince and to do this use rhetoric. If democratic political elites lose touch with the general public, there is a real danger of resentment among the latter with the political order as a whole. This creates space for populists to take advantage of the disillusionment of the public with the ‘political elite that do not understand them’. As already discussed in the introduction, the political elites’ consensus on the EU and lack of ‘selling it’ might form part of the explanation for the rise of the anti-European parties in the last European elections.

4.2 – Is there a European Public Discourse?

Politicians have a role in ‘selling’ the EU through the mass media – if they chose to off course. The question is though in which mass media? A problem for the EU might be that there is no overarching mass media (Bursens and Baetens 2004: footnote 10) and thus no European discourse.⁶⁴ One seems forced to look at the national discourses and in specific the national mass media systems (Bursens and Baetens 2004: footnote 10; Liebert and Trentz 2008: 2).

This though is less problematic than might think at first. In this research, we will analyse newspapers and most Member States’s national newspapers are in a financial crisis (Oosterbaan and Wansink 2008: 34-61).⁶⁵ They are dependent on advertisers, which judge a newspaper on its sales. Jürgen Habermas talks in this regard about the colonisation of the public sphere by the market. Yet, paradoxically this market dependence, which is meant as a criticism, because it leads to biased coverage⁶⁶, might partially contribute to the emergence of a European public discourse. More and more European newspapers publish articles from other European newspapers. This consumes less time and costs less than writing them oneself; both are very valuable commodities for newspaper companies. One might thus describe the European public discourse as slowly emerging (Peters et al. 2005: 152).

Another important consequence of the market dependence is that newspapers become dependent upon contributions by politicians. Serious journalists see this as the beginning of the end of quality journalism and to some extent they might be right. For politicians this means that if they are capable of delivering an interesting story then it is very likely to be printed. This is not to suggest politicians should control newspaper, that would be a very dangerous development indeed, but neither are politicians as dependent on the mass media as they are sometimes made out to be (Oosterbaan and Wansink 2008: 120-131).