ISBN: 9781907301513    Publisher: ECPR Press Year of publishing: 2013     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 292        

This book investigates the way politicians and citizens evaluated the European Union and the process of European integration in public debates during the 2009 European Parliament elections. It presents detailed and rigorous content analysis of online media where citizens directly and voluntarily responded to news stories posted by journalists. New evidence is presented about the dynamic nature of contestation about Europe on the internet and the degree of convergence towards Euroscepticism across EU member states. Such convergence poses new challenges for democratic representation in the EU and provides insight into the public basis for a legitimate European Union. 'In this book European contestation has come of age. Pieter de Wilde, Asimina Michailidou and Hans-Jorg Trenz deliver a tour de force in mapping the multifaceted debate about Europe among parties and citizens in twelve countries. Informed by rich media data they convincingly argue that opposition as well as support for Europe comes in different shades: it can be partial, conditional, or temporal. This is a wonderfully nuanced book for scholars, students and policy makers concerned about Europe's future.'
Liesbet Hooghe, W. R. Kenan, Jr.Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina and Chair in Multilevel Governance, VU University of Amsterdam
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Pieter de Wilde is senior researcher at the Department of Transnational Conflict and International Institutions, Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Oslo where he conducted research on the politicization of European integration at ARENA, Center for European Studies. Currently, he is working on the WZB project "The Political Sociology of Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism". Asimina Michailidou is senior researcher at ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway. Her work revolves around two themes: the European public sphere and online media communications. She is currently exploring the interplay between online media and mobilization in the context of crisis under ARENA's EUROTRANS project (The Transformation and Sustainability of the European Political Order). Hans-Jorg Trenz is Professor in European Studies at the University of Copenhagen and adjunct Professor at ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo. His main research interests are in the areas of media, communication and public sphere, civil society, European civilization and identity, migration and ethnic minorities, cultural and political sociology, social and political theory, democracy and constitutionalism in the European Union.
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