Democracy and New Media in the European Union: Communication or Participation Deficit?

Abstract

At the heart of most academic and political debates regarding the future of the European Union lie three key ideas: openness and transparency; citizens’ participation in the decision-making process; and democratic legitimacy. Scholars and EU policy-makers have advocated the use of new media, particularly the Internet, in the democratising process of the EU. This article focuses on the top-down aspect of the online European public dialogue and the opportunities that the EU’s public communication strategy offers to citizens for involvement in shaping the Union’s political nature. Following a ‘multi-method’ approach for the gathering of empirical data, the Internet’s role in the EU’s public communication strategy is examined here from four aspects: the European Commission’s public communication policies (document analysis); the Commission’s implementation of its online policies (website analysis); their impact on key Internet audiences (user survey); and the views of policy-makers (semi-structured interviews with senior Commission officials).

Keywords

• new media
• European Commission
• democratic legitimacy
• public communication
• participation