Link zum Vorlesungsverzeichnis

ACHTUNG: Das Seminar kann vorraussichtlich erst Mitte Mai beginnen. Das Startdatum und die Nachholtermine (eventuell Blockseminare) für die ausgefallenen Seminare werden noch bekanntgegeben.

The EU is not visible enough in traditional media, leaving citizens uninformed about what the EU does. And when European affairs are covered and debated in the media, it is primarily through a national lens, and not with a European perspective. These are some of the arguments that are made to support the claim that the EU suffers a ‘democratic deficit’.  

This course offers an introduction to these normative debates on the role of the ‘public sphere’ for the democratic legitimacy of the EU and to how such issues might be explored empirically. The main focus is on how and why different types of media, both traditional and social media, contribute to the status of the EU in the public sphere; the EU’s own efforts to meet such challenges; and what consequences the EU’s presence in the public sphere has for the democratic legitimacy of the EU.