Contesting Europe: Exploring Euroscepticism in Online Media Coverage - Paperback

by Pieter de Wilde (Author), Asimina Michailidou (Author), Hans J. Trenz (Author)

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. The authors present detailed, rigorous analysis of citizens' online response to news stories, and reveal new evidence about the dynamic nature of online contestation of Europe and the degree of convergence towards Euroscepticism. Such convergence provides new challenges for democratic representation in the EU, and insight into the public basis for a legitimate European Union.

Author Biography

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 politicisation 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 mobilisation in the context of crisis under ARENA's EUROTRANS project (The Transformation and Sustainability of the European Political Order). Hans-Jörg 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 civilisation and identity, migration and ethnic minorities, cultural and political sociology, social and political theory, democracy and constitutionalism in the European Union.