In the spring of
2007 the European Union is celebrating its 50th birthday!
In addition, on the 1st January 2007 two new member states
from Eastern Europe joined the Union, thereby extending
the EU to a total of 27 member states and nearly 500 million
inhabitants. 2007 is also the European Year for Equal
Opportunities for All, with a focus on equality, diversity
and ‘a just society’ (see http://equality2007.europa.eu/).
While the EU advances as a comprehensive decision-maker
and power broker, by all accounts it continues to remain
a ‘remote’, complex and non-transparent political
entity. Although the EU is seemingly proceeding with its
integration project, at the same time the ways and the
methods through which this is happening are either incomprehensible
or disputable or both. Indeed, to its own citizens, the
EU risks becoming an ‘empty signifier’.
This Symposium aims
to assess the roles of media and communication in fostering
equal opportunities, civic participation and diversity
in Europe, as well as its potentials for addressing the
European democratic deficit, particularly the perceived
disconnection between the economic and political elites
and large parts of EU citizens. In this Symposium we aim
to critically discuss and interrogate the role of media
and communication relating to issues of equality, diversity,
civic participation and democracy beyond the nation state,
on the basis of theoretical and/or empirical research.
Media and communication can be seen to fulfil different
roles in this regard; as a medium (information provision),
as a mediator (deliberative processes, activism), as a
political actor (the media and media-professionals), as
a citizenship right (communication rights), as a tool
for or indicator of enhancing equal opportunities, but
also as a battlefield for meaning on what it entails to
be a European citizen or what Europe means.
To this effect, the
ECREA-sections Communication and Democracy, Journalism,
Political Communication, and Gender and Communication,
as well as the European Journalism Centre (EJC) and Vesalius
College invited researchers who address one or more of
the following key-themes and subsequent issues to attend
and contribute to the Symposium, either by proposing a
paper to be presented or as audience and discussants.
