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This paper examines the visual construction and performance of European identity in the public communication materials of fifty cities participating in the European Capital of Culture scheme between 2005 and 2011. The paper is part of a large-scale project that examines the complex ways in which a sense of a collective European identity is being constructed in contemporary European visual discourse. I consider how 'Europe' is reimagining and re-presenting itself in the wake of European integration and overall processes of globalization. In the multilingual context of Europe, visual discourse may function as a cross-culturally strategic form of communication, thanks to its perceptual availability and communicative power. Through a social semiotic analysis, I examine how public communication materials frame these cities as quintessentially 'European' in order to show the 'European dimension' required by the European Capital of Culture scheme as a key criteria for success. In particular, then, I discuss and problematize the ways in which cultural diversity and shared identity (i.e. the key principles of such 'European dimension' found in official discourses about European integration) are discursively handled in these texts. In doing this, I identify a number of semiotic resources used towards this - potentially exclusive and certainly problematic - visual construction of European identity, specifically by dividing these visual resources into 2 overarching analytical categories: visual content and design effects. The data collection for this project was completed at the end of summer 2006 and the social semiotic analysis of visual texts is well under way, with the plan to complete it by the end of this year. The rest of the paper, including conceptual/methodological framework, background information and discussion of relevant cases, has been completed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper-in-progress makes two contributions in a larger search for a social history of early cybernetics. The first is a simply a close and comparative reading of four key cybernetic texts on both sides of the Atlantic from 1948 to 1955: two American (Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics (1948) and The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)) as well as two Soviet (Sergei Sobolev, Anatolii Kitov, and Aleksei Liapunov’s “The Main Features of Cybernetics” and Ernest Kolman’s “What is Cybernetics?” (1955)). The close reading of texts in two languages offers at once an introduction and a reexamination of the foundations of first-order cybernetics as an interdisciplinary and international science. The second contribution made is an attempt to develop and revisit a historical irony: cybernetics emerged as a subtle and often sublimated cry for peace-oriented collaboration across, and largely thanks to, the academic internecine aggression across the Atlantic. Cybernetics, as initially envisioned by Wiener, remains an irreducibly cross-cultural artifact—one whose call for international translation, cooperation, and an ultimate peace may stand worthwhile revisitation in Wiener’s time as well as in our own. Especially appropriate to note for conference-goers in Dresden, this paper loosely details in its footnotes some of the explicitly European social, cultural, and literary projects that preceded cybernetic thought. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to explore which factors trigger whether and how national media open up for communication flows dealing with European issues. So far research has highlighted factors that explain commonalities in debates between countries as a result of European competences and events. This paper makes an attempt to understand why a specific European issue is debated in a country, but disregarded in another or why issues are debated differently in different countries. Three hypotheses are developed that specify how the national level colors the domestic adaptations of a common European input. To find evidence for the impact of national levels on European debates, a network analysis is conducted for the German and French media reporting and commentating on EU enlargement and a common European Constitution. This network analytic concept of public debates allows for an actor-based and relational explanation of agenda-building processes. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eastern European women enthusiastically embraced the radical social and political changes which advocated true equality at home and at the working place for women and men alike. However, the position of Eastern European women in society did not change as expected. On the contrary, the feminization of poverty overwhelmed the female population in Eastern Europe, leaving many women unemployed, devalued and depressed. This paper argues that the woman of the new Eastern European democracies has asserted a new identity in sharp opposition to the traditionally established image of the Eastern European woman as a caretaker and a heroine-worker conditioned in a highly traditional patriarchal society. By examining the rhetoric of the lyrical content of contemporary Bulgarian pop folk songs, this paper contends that Eastern European women have overthrown traditional stereotypes of femininity and asserted a new sexualized and aggressive role of independence, rejecting the stereotypes of the submissive, docile woman of the patriarchal society as well as the stereotypes of the asexual, emancipated woman of communist Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution is focusing Europe with its special mixture of language, lifestyle, life worlds and the understanding of journalism role in society. It delivers the perfect surrounding for a case study - because all the findings could be discussed from a common standpoint: the societies in Europe - the different they are -, from orientation of politics, distribution of political power, or economic growth still are reflecting a quite similar base, and could, with that, be compared in a way better than any other region of the globe. This contribution will analyze foreign correspondents' self-conception and labour conditions by using a survey with questionnaire plus content analysis. The perhaps most interesting hypotheses of the paper is - especially regarding the current crisis on the financial markets - the following: "The foreign correspondents of European media specializing in business journalism have a special professional self-conception which is composed of various dimensions." The findings on this hypotheses could directly lead to an interesting interpretation of the reaction of European mass media in the second half of 2008. With that, this paper seems to be fairly relevant to near oneself to an intellectual of understanding role-consciousness of business reporters working in foreign countries. From seven alternatives the foreign correspondents questioned in Germany see themselves as "arrangers" and "explainers" with a "neutral fact orientated" habit. That might be the most surprising finding of this research - and should (in the opinion of the authors) - lead to further research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about media concentration and its adequate handling are not coming to an end. This paper stresses the dual character of media goods, the underlying ideological ideals, and the attendant institutional setting as source of value conflict in communications policy making. It discusses this value conflict and gives examples of where it surfaces and how it is confronted. It is particularly evident in cases of media concentration. Newly introduced communications laws and policies within Europe and the USA aim to reduce (ownership) regulation, promote competition and cope with the challenges posed by convergence. This quest is coupled in part with protections of media pluralism through custom-developed indices for measuring concentration in media markets and tests for assessing media plurality in merger cases. The paper describes and discusses such new methods and instruments as novel but imperfect attempts by policy makers to respond to the various challenges in communications such as value conflict, convergence, the need for empirical proof and claims for non-economic ways of assessing media diversity. It concludes by stressing the need to re-emphasize normative claims as essential guiding elements of communications policy making. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic comparison of online newspaper coverage comprising both Eastern and Western European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom). Countries were sampled according to the classification developed by Hallin and Mancini (liberal, democratic-corporatist, polarized-pluralist countries) as well as according to membership status in the European Union (6 old members, 2 members that have joined in 2004, and 2 members joining in 2007). Analysis focuses on three dimensions: similarity in reporting styles (i.e. factualness of new reports), vertical Europeanization of news (focus on EU matters and "domestication" of EU issues) as well as horizontal Europeanization (intensity and patterns of mutual observation between countries). Correlational, regression, and cluster analyses are employed in studying the data. Results show that there are no systematic country differences in reporting styles, thus lending support to the homogenization thesis. Levels of both vertical and horizontal Europeanization in news can be explained by EU membership status, with different patterns emerging for the 2 dimensions of Europeanization. In mutual observation between EU member countries, Western European countries get the bulk of attention but this can be explained by their bigger size, not by a particular neglect of the East or by the duration of EU membership. In conclusion, more theory-driven explanatory research on country differences in news reporting is advocated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper conceptualizes the Europeanization of the national public spheres as a gradual process that may occur on four different dimensions: monitoring governance, mutual observation, discursive exchange and collective identification with Europe. A quantitative content analysis of the political discourses in quality newspapers of five European Union (EU) member states (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain) over a period of twenty years. The analysis revealed that the main pattern of transnationalization to be found in all countries is segmented Europeanization. The study found that the emergence of a European public sphere is lacking behind the development of European integration and that despite the partial increase in public attention on the EU, the level of Europeanization is still very low.

Diasporic media and communication practices advance re-imaginings of national and transnational cultural spaces and challenge the boundedness of cultures and belonging within the nation-state. In the case of Europe, the growing diversity of cultural and media repertoires destabilize ideologies of national and cultural integration. As a consequence, living within (European) media cultures and imagining identity and belonging become terrains of cultural contestation. This paper draws from a cross-European mapping of diasporic media in order to show how commonality is imagined, but also disputed and reshaped in media and communication practices. Five themes that relate to diasporic media cultures illustrate the ways European diff鲡nce is shaped in the engagement with diverse cultural and media projects. Media and communications, as producing images and narratives and as being adopted and appropriated for intercommunity and interspatial connections, play an active part in processes of identification with communities within Europe and beyond it. This discussion concludes with an argument about the possibility for more inclusive cultural politics of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Sept. 12, 2001, the publishers of the two leading dailies in Italy and France headlined their front-page editorials with the same words: ?We Are All Americans.? Both meant more than sympathy for the American people ? the basic question this study seeks to answer is, what socio-cultural construct did these journalists associate with being American? Adapting a ritual view of communication, this paper studies the evolution of a discourse of the United States constructed by U.S.-based foreign correspondents for six Western European newspapers at the turn of the twenty-first century. It found two universal tenets?the acknowledgment, ranging from grateful to hateful, of the United States as the world?s sole superpower, whose isolationism is feared just as much as its meddling, and a stereotyping of Americans crystallized in the thorough dislike for President Bush. The construction of a common transatlantic identity was limited to the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, while the constructions of American and being American were unaltered by that tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sees globalization as the emergence of multiple logics of production, flow and audience reception, based on identity. They are very unequal or asymmetric in their reach and power, but they are also dynamic, changing along with both structural and cultural forces, as an examination of the viewing and broadcast time for television from various countries in Denmark, 1993-2007, shows. As channels have multiplied over time, the proportion of Danish content has gone down, but viewing of Danish content remains high. U.S. content has increased but viewing of it has not. Both screening and viewing of other Anglophone content has gone up considerably, while screening and viewing of Nordic and European content remains low. So while Danish viewers focus in viewing (and arguably in identity) is still on Danish culture, their secondary interest (and identity?) has become more Anglophone, not Nordic or European, from 1993-2007. This study reviews language impact studies and other cultural theories to consider reasons for that. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an investigation into the educational backgrounds, working activities, remunerations and job satisfaction of European communication professionals. Based on factor analysis on a sample of 1410 European communicators, five major working functions are identified: lobbying with external constituencies, advising and reviewing policies, positioning the firm in the marketplace as well as external and internal facilitation. Conducting ANOVA we hold that some of the more technician-related working activities are predominantly exercised by female communication professionals whereas managerial activities are prevalently performed by their male counterparts. As will be shown, while the educational background does not diverge between genders, salaries as well as job satisfaction does, likewise, there are differences regarding educational background, salaries as well as job satisfaction on a European level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains the results of a survey administered in Fall 2002 to 283 students about stereotypes and personal opinions of the Europeans in general and of four European nations (France, Germany, Italy, and United Kingdom).From the data emerges that our sample perceives the Americans and the Europeans as having two different characters, with the Americans reflecting "masculine values" (attachment to material possessions, and a tendency to achieve status and to compete), and the Europeans as reflecting instead "feminine values" (appreciation for arts and association with romance and passion). The Europeans are also related to values such as tradition (heritage, history) and family. We identified 2 stereotypes of the Europeans, one that emphasizes negative traits such as arrogance, rudeness, and nationalism, and the other that emphasizes positive traits such as romance, passion, sophistication, and art. The two stereotypes were not related to personal opinions based on mediated contacts vs. personal ones. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses Swedish, Danish and British news about Europe from the perspective that television news narratives are sites where collective (i.e. national and international) identities are cultivated and mobilised through the contrast between 'we' and 'others'. The issue is not if European stories are domesticated to fit national news bulletins, but how events are domesticated, and what meanings are made from these by the programmes' producers. The results indicate that viewers are offered different images of Europe during the week 15-21 November 1999, and that the journalists play active roles in constructing 'themes' which link together different types of news stories about Europe into stories about 'us'. The Swedish 'we' was characterised as a moralising global villager, slightly superior but willing to adapt to the outside world, the Danish 'We' appeared as an anxious and conscientious European, trying to do its share, despite its reservations on EU cooperation. The British 'We' was characterised as the engaged international humanitarian who prefers to keep a distance from time-consuming Euro-squabbles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically discusses the normative criteria commonly used to assess the emergence of a "European Public Sphere" and presents the results of a comparative, long-term, multidimensional content analysis of national quality newspapers in five European countries to test these criteria (A, D, DK, F, and GB, 1982-2003). In the first part, four normative models of Europeanization are advanced and partly revised. In particular, it is argued that a European public sphere cannot do without some degree of mutual observation and exchange between countries as well as some collective identification with Europe; coverage of EU institutions and policies in the national media is not enough. In the second part content analytic data on all of these dimensions is presented. Unlike other studies, this paper identifies a complex pattern of "segmented Europeanization" due to its multidimensional design: While EU coverage does increase over the past two decades, mutual observation and exchange as well as collective identification stagnate. Proposals for future research on both the reasons and the consequences of this pattern are advanced in conclusion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the potential of considering the interaction between media use and human values in discussions about traditional political participation. The results suggest that mainstreaming effects also operate at the level of core human values. The results suggest that culture is an important potential contextual, moderating factor between media use and participation in public life. The analyses lend some limited support to Putnam's revised hypothesis that entertainment television has a particularly negative impact on participation for most people.

This article deals with British public debates over European integration by recourse to an original data-set on political claims-making. A media-based data on public claims-making is used and the sample covers a five-year period, from 1990 through 2002. Claims-making acts which link different levels of politics are important carriers of Europeanisation processes for national public spheres. There are five possible types of claims-making involving national actors. Each of the possible types of claims-making represents a relationship between actors that constitutes a specific form of Europeanised political communication. The French public sphere are generally more pro-European than those in the British, with the exception of horizontal claims-making by actors from foreign European Union states.

Quantitative study of media and EU expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historical case study seeks to expand upon Ekaterina Ognianova's "transitional press concept" by utilizing in-depth interviews conducted with writers and editors at four newspapers in Moldova's capital, Chisinau, during summer 1992. The present study shows how variables involved in Ognianova's model apply in a country such as Moldova, one of the poorest and most turbulent of the former Soviet republics. Findings indicate that the economic, legal, and political changes enveloping Moldova fit within the transitional framework. Moldovan newspapers, too, exhibited many of the characteristics found in the transitional model, including the concurrent operation of several press philosophies. Some newspapers followed the communist or authoritarian concept, eagerly joined forces with a political party or the government, and relishing the opportunity to become political leaders in the debates going on in the newly independent nation. Other newspapers, which were initially forced by economic necessity to court subsidies from the government or a political party, exhibited traits of the democratic socialist, and even the libertarian concept, by putting the needs of the country's readership ahead of partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored how Central European countries draw virtual borderlands on the World Wide Web through self-presentation sites. The underlying questions driving this research were whether Central European countries take advantage of the Internet to compensate for the imbalance of information flow in international media, and how they do so. National presentation Web sites of the seven Central European countries were examined in order to understand what self-presentation strategies they use to introduce their countries to the world. One of the main findings of the study was that while contouring their own virtual borderlands, Central European countries attempted to erase the shadow of another invisible borderland, the Iron Curtain. RUNNING HEAD: Central Europe on the WWW [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euro, the single currency in twelve countries of the European Union, started circulating as notes and coins among some 302 millions people on January 1st , 2002. The introduction of the new currency has diverse implications for the people in each of the 12 countries, both at national and Eurozone levels. Therefore, this change provides an exciting opportunity to test the agenda-setting hypothesis. Data for the study come from the major newspaper in France, the country that initiated the switch to euro, and public opinion polls conducted by Gallup Europe. A total of 298 paragraphs from 72 articles are analyzed to examine second-level agenda-setting effects on substantive and affective attributes of the euro. Findings suggest that affective attributes relating to national implications of the euro are subject to agenda-setting effects, while the ones relating to the entire Eurozone are not. Also, the French media agenda appears to be correlated with the Eurozone public agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selective exposure to likeminded political viewpoints on algorithmic social media platforms is seen as a potential source for opinion polarization. But so far, little is known about how realistic this proposed mechanism is. It is furthermore an open question, what effects a potential opinion polarization invoked by social media use has on citizens' democratic behavior, especially in a non-electoral context. Focusing on the issue of immigration during the refugee influx to Europe in autumn 2015, this study investigates the effects of social media usage on attitude polarization and connects it to political participation in refugee-related activities. A panel study conducted among Danish citizens (n=847) reveals that frequent social media usage contributes to a reinforcement of existing attitudes and at the same time mobilizes political participation. However, citizens who become more extreme in their attitude towards immigration are found to be less likely to become politically active about it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicizing the smart phone pocket archives and experiences of 16 young refugees living in the Netherlands, this explorative study re-conceptualizes and empirically grounds communication rights. The focus is on the usage of social media among young refugees, who operate from the margins of society, human rights discourse and technology. I focus on digital performativity as a means to address unjust communicative power relations and human right violations. Methodologically, I draw on empirical data gathered through a mixed-methods, participatory action fieldwork research approach. The empirical section details how digital practices may invoke human right ideals including the human right to self-determination, the right to selfexpression, the right to information, the right to family life and the right to cultural identity. The digital performativity of communication rights becomes meaningful when fundamentally situated within hierarchical and intersectional power relations of gender, race, nationality among others, and as inherently related to material conditions and other basic human rights including access to shelter, food, well-being and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini's study 'Comparing Media Systems' (2004), the authors discuss the phenomenon of "savage deregulation" in the media sector as a hurdle in Southern Europe's path toward modernization. However, their analysis of the phenomenon is problematic in that it equates deregulation with a "commercial deluge" (2004: 125). This analogy masks the true causes of savage deregulation under certain conditions, as well as its potential benefits under repressive regimes. Greece and Thailand are used comparatively to analyze the distinct causes and results of savage deregulation in the European and global context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study follows the saga of the British Prime Minster's Office dancing around the issues of EU membership and euro switchover, constantly promoting the former and avoiding the latter. At the beginning of year 2000, the Downing Street Cabinet was facing a mostly undecided or hostile public on the issue of the EU and a hostile public on the issue of the euro. There was work to be done if the intention of the Prime Minister was to promote Britain's involvement in Europe and a possible switchover to the euro. Even if the case of a single government is explored, the study expands the normative contingency theory of accommodation in public relations by adding new variables relating to government-practiced public relations in an international context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1998, the audience votes at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), a major annual TV event, have been cast via Televoting. Undoubtedly, the quality of the songs and singers is the central explanatory factor for its success. From a communication studies point of view, the remaining variance is more interesting. It can be explained by characteristics of, and relationships between the participating countries. These factors point to news value theory. Until today, news factors have been applied to journalistic and recipients' news selection. In this study, they are used to explain ESC votes as interactive audience behavior. Three hypotheses are examined. H1: the higher the political/economic/cultural status of a country, the more points its song receives. H2: the closer two countries, the more points the national audiences administer to each other. H3: songs from 'next door giant' countries receive fewer points from their (smaller) neighbors than expected. All hypotheses are confirmed partially. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]