[ecrea] Call for papers “European public space. Towards integration of information arenas?” in "Problemi dell'informazione"

Call for papers “European public space. Towards integration of 
information arenas?”

"Problemi dell'Informazione”, the Italian journal of journalism and 
communication studies, looks for paper about

“European public space. Towards integration of information arenas?”, 
edited by Marinella Belluati, University of Turin, Rolando Marini, 
University for Foreigners of Perugia.

Europe in the national public space is a perspective that is becoming 
more and more complicated to understand in terms of institutional 
globalization and the interconnection of communication environments. 
While Member States are reluctant to lose sovereignty and are therefore 
defending their internal interests, the convergence of global phenomena 
is obliging institutions to rethink about the public sphere and the 
relationship with citizens.

The European integration process often clashes with the difficulty of 
Member States to react dynamically to the new context and therefore does 
not encourage the growth of a common European identity. An emergent 
distrust towards the European integration process is weakening the unity 
project and making increasingly fragile the idea of a shared identity 
and of a common space for decision making. The European integration 
issue and the growing perception of its concreteness seem to collide 
with the difficulty of letting the people understand its complexity, 
also because of the adoption of languages not able to construct meaning 
and then support by the citizens. The recent economic crisis has 
gradually increased feelings of mistrust towards the European model, 
which has become too rigid and has produced internal discord, as the 
recent immigration crisis confirms.

Despite the fact that the European integration crisis is having a direct 
effect on the everyday life of European citizens, the groups involved in 
public opinion building (politicians, intellectuals and experts) do not 
consider the European public space as a priority. European institutions 
continue to invest in integration efforts and communication strategies. 
Nevertheless, they appear detached and unable to create European frames 
and produce a European identity. National institutions and their 
information systems, which should be creating connections between 
citizens and the European Union, are, on the contrary, fostering 
scepticism and cognitive distances.

The European integration process continues to be of great importance 
from a geo-political point of view. Nevertheless, there is widespread 
disengagement starting from the political institutional level and 
information system to public opinion. European institutions are unable 
to stop this trend and the academia appears to be more and more 
disinterested in dealing with this question.

The aim of this special issue is to collect contributions that focus on 
the role of communication in the European common space.

The three main areas dealt with will be:

a) public communication (and its implicit link with political 
communication);

b) changes in the European Journalistic field (in terms of professional 
skills, agenda-building and newsmaking);

c) the promotion of European Identity and Cultural heritage through 
celebrations and public events (communication campaigns, social 
advertising and events).

*a) Public communication (and its implicit link with political 
communication)*

In this context, the idea of public communication is considered in two 
different ways. Firstly, the institutions ability to create cognitive 
capital, to reinforce common values and to produce good (or bad) 
narrative will be appreciated. Secondly, there will be improvement in 
the public communication sector, deliberative democracy and public 
engagement practices. Particular attention will be given to cohesion 
policy strategies and communication of European structural funds, 
European social advertising on strategic issues such as health, energy, 
food etc., and European Digital Agenda for open policy and open data as 
examples of transparency between institutions and citizens. All these 
factors may contribute to an effective strategy to reinforce common 
values at a national and local level.

Another aspect to be considered is the production of data driven 
policies and the correct use of technical information in public debate. 
Europe has been promoting the use of these skills for many years and is 
encouraging national public institutions and citizens to collect and use 
data in order to improve the quality of public decisions and civic 
engagement.

The European Union has made efforts to reduce democratic deficit by 
investing in communication strategies, such as White Paper of 
communication, Green paper and other more recent documentation. 
Unfortunately, the evaluation of European public communication 
strategies has not been analysed enough as public policy. On the 
contrary, there is a lot of research that confirms that European 
communication is too cold, boring and normative and is unable to 
understand the complexity of the contemporary situation in the Union. 
Moreover, the question whether European communication strategies should 
be centralized (as Junker decided) is still not a question of debate.

*b) Changes in the European Journalistic field (in terms of professional 
skills, agenda-building and newsmaking)*

The second area we would like to focus on is European Journalism (from 
Europe and towards Europe) because, excluding election time and the 
economic crisis, this question is not crucial in public debate. This is 
in contrast with the fact that European communication is continuously 
changing and new projects are becoming more and more relevant. Recently, 
experiences of press releases and services (e.g. Politico.eu, Eunews.it 
and so on) have shown that the European communication environment is 
changing. The growth of disintermediation in the field of communication 
has made the figure of the correspondent from Brussels less important 
and has changed its style and working methods of journalism (the 
so-called Brussels bubble). On the other hand, the flow of information 
from Europe and towards Europe is, more than ever before, increasing its 
impact on countries and citizens. This means that new skills and 
experiences in the media sector are changing and also in the European 
information field, international news-values and discursive frames are 
transforming. As a consequence, this is having an impact on agenda 
building logics. Finally, data journalism opportunities could offer the 
European Union a resource to contrast misinformation and fake news.

Europe is therefore no longer a simple issue in the public debate, but 
rather a focal point for new media skills and agencies. Priming and 
framing effects are changing the news information process but often this 
is not so evident for the operators in the media sectors. Today the new 
media tendency is to work towards the creation of a professional figure 
able to move into varied media environments and use different language 
styles and discursive approaches. Europe is investing in this. The 
journalistic field is radically transforming and the European lens could 
be the litmus test of this.

*c) The promotion of European Identity and Cultural heritage through 
celebrations and public events (communication campaigns, social 
advertising and events)*

The third area in which Europe is investing in communication strategies 
regards celebrations, anniversaries and festivities. All these events 
are part of a strategy that contribute to promote European cultural 
heritage and European identity, for example the 60th anniversary of the 
Treaty of Rome or Europe day on the 9th of May and other meetings and 
events with European public figures. The organisation of events or 
social campaigns are promotional strategies with which Europe and Member 
States are trying to reduce empathetic and symbolic distances. These 
strategies are trying to improve the European image and aim at 
legitimizing European institution actions. It is a well-known fact that 
Europe is investing in various projects that promote European cultural 
heritage and European common memory.

*Submission of proposals *

Deadline for abstract submission is June 30, 2018

Abstract:250 words maximum (references not included)

Full papers will be due October 15, 2018 and will undergo a double-blind 
peer review procedure.

Papers: length between max 8000 words maximum (including notes and 
references)

Papers in English and Italian are accepted.

Submissions should be sent to: (probleminformazione /at/ mulino.it) 
<mailto:(probleminformazione /at/ mulino.it)>.



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