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Societies
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EU-Rope: (Trans)nationalism, Media, Legitimacy
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EU-Rope: (Trans)nationalism, Media, Legitimacy

A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2022) | Viewed by 12762

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Franco Zappettini

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Comunication and Media, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZX, UK
Interests: critical discursive analysis of political communication in (trans/inter)national spheres; intercultural communication processes; critical discursive analysis of organisational communication

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Contributions are invited to an Open Access Special Issue of Societies which explores how EU-rope has been mediatised in a variety of recent social contexts and how that has contributed to different forms of de/legitimation of (trans)national solidarity. We thus focus on how different meaning(s) of (trans)national identities have been constructed, negotiated and challenged not only amidst different ‘crises’ such as Brexit, austerity, Covid, but also in relation to new digital affordances and actors. We interrogate the production, circulation and consumption of top-down/bottom-up, institutional/public discourse of EU-rope in and by a variety of media to explain how these have related to de/legitimation processes. Our aim is to contribute to the interdisciplinary literature at the intersection of Critical Discourse Studies, European studies, Political Communication, Journalism and Media Studies. Contributions in the form of research articles or conceptual papers are encouraged that tackle the question of the mediatisation of Europe(an identity) from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. A 500-word detailed abstract clearly stating topic, research questions, theoretical framework and methodology adopted as well as preliminary findings should be submitted to the Guest editor for initial evaluation by 30/6/2021. 

Prof. Dr. Franco Zappettini
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Europe
  • legitimacy
  • media
  • transnationalism
  • critical discourse analysis
  • political communication
  • European identity

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 5213 KiB  
Article
Vaccine Nationalism or ‘Brexit Dividend’? Strategies of Legitimation in the EU-UK Post-Brexit Debate on COVID-19 Vaccination Campaigns
by Giuditta Caliendo
Societies 2022, 12(2), 37; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc12020037 - 28 Feb 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2833
Abstract
The initial stage of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been slow-moving and marred by supply disruptions in the EU. These problems have triggered severe criticism toward the institutions and highlighted a stark contrast compared to Britain’s vaccination campaign, which, at the beginning of [...] Read more.
The initial stage of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been slow-moving and marred by supply disruptions in the EU. These problems have triggered severe criticism toward the institutions and highlighted a stark contrast compared to Britain’s vaccination campaign, which, at the beginning of 2021, was one of the fastest in the continent. In the ensuing debate between the EU and the UK on their uneven vaccination rates, the Brexit argument has been repeatedly invoked: Some political commentators have argued that the reason why COVID-19 vaccination campaign could run so smoothly in Britain is that the country was not held back by the EU’s slow approval process. This paper observes the way in which Britain emphasized its blistering vaccination pace to deflect criticism against Brexit. From a discursive perspective, Britain’s vaccine success was used to vindicate the Brexit project, providing a new argument in favour of its indispensable and timely nature. At the other end of a binary rhetoric, the EU officials attempted to shatter confidence in the ‘British vaccine’, while also depositing blame on other factors triggering the EU’s delay, such as the shortage of pharmaceutical supplies. The analytical part of this paper foregrounds strategies of discursive legitimation to observe how, and to what extent, the Brexit debate is being reshaped in UK and EU media by looking at a corpus of political tweets. The rhetorical strategies adopted by UK political leaders and EU officials to (de)legitimise national and supranational choices with reference to the COVID-19 vaccination campaign are observed through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis as it embraces the idea that discursive acts are in dialectical relation to the social and institutional structures in which they are framed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue EU-Rope: (Trans)nationalism, Media, Legitimacy)
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22 pages, 3017 KiB  
Article
Online EU Contestation in Times of Crisis: Towards a European Digital Demos?
by Milica Pejovic
Societies 2022, 12(2), 34; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc12020034 - 25 Feb 2022
Viewed by 2159
Abstract
Crises, as critical moments in the process of European integration, are particularly conducive to the increased politicisation of the European Union (EU) and its contestation. The year 2015 saw the peaks of the Greek and the refugee crises, the two crises that put [...] Read more.
Crises, as critical moments in the process of European integration, are particularly conducive to the increased politicisation of the European Union (EU) and its contestation. The year 2015 saw the peaks of the Greek and the refugee crises, the two crises that put the two flagships of the European project—the Euro and the Schengen zone—into imminent peril, causing a prolonged EU legitimacy crisis. Building on the literature that considers Euroscepticism as a context-dependent and discursive phenomenon, this study analyses Facebook debates that emerged in response to the Greek and refugee crises, trying to identify how the EU was evaluated and how these evaluations were justified. To answer this question, this study involved the qualitative content analysis of over 7000 Facebook comments related to the Greek and migration crises published in 2015 on the pages of the European Parliament and the European Commission. Contrary to the literature that explains popular Euroscepticism by utilitarian or cultural factors, the findings of this study show that the most recurrent justification for negative EU polity evaluations is the lack of democratic credentials. Furthermore, the commentators mostly assessed the EU’s current set-up and, to a much lesser extent, the principle and the future of European integration. Moreover, the Facebook public extensively commented on the level of inclusiveness, particularly bemoaning the lack of inclusiveness of “ordinary” people in EU decision making. Nevertheless, the commentators frequently referred to themselves as “we Europeans” or “we people”, opposing themselves to EU, national, or financial “elites”. Despite its populist elements, this sense of “we-ness” incepted in social media suggests the capacity of transnational online discussion to foster European digital demos. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue EU-Rope: (Trans)nationalism, Media, Legitimacy)
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17 pages, 1371 KiB  
Article
National Myth in UK–EU Representations by British Conservative Prime Ministers from Churchill to Johnson
by Anna Islentyeva and Deborah Dunkel
Societies 2022, 12(1), 14; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc12010014 - 24 Jan 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3033
Abstract
Britain’s withdrawal of its EU membership has a number of political and economic implications for UK–EU relations. In seeking to understand the 2016 EU referendum outcome, it is insightful to study the historical development of discourses representing the UK–EU relationship. Doing so reveals [...] Read more.
Britain’s withdrawal of its EU membership has a number of political and economic implications for UK–EU relations. In seeking to understand the 2016 EU referendum outcome, it is insightful to study the historical development of discourses representing the UK–EU relationship. Doing so reveals the trends of British exceptionalism and British Euroscepticism as integral to these discourses. Applying a diachronic approach, this paper examines ten speeches by nine Conservative Prime Ministers (PMs) held at the annual Conservative Party Conferences from 1945 to 2020. The speeches include, among others, those by Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and Boris Johnson. The qualitative analysis traces the discursive strategies employed by PMs in their construction of the Conservative narrative of national myth, focusing especially on the issues of British national identity in relation to Europe. Methods of Discourse Historical Analysis (DHA) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) are applied in order to identify strategies employed by PMs as tools of persuasion for the purpose of consolidating political power and promoting their policies. This study has identified three major interrelated strategies—myth, ally and enemy creation—which are used to narrate the story of Britain’s relationship with Europe as a potential member of the Union, as a member, and up to its efforts to leave the EU. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue EU-Rope: (Trans)nationalism, Media, Legitimacy)
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14 pages, 501 KiB  
Article
The Hidden Interest in a Common European Identity
by Gintaras Aleknonis
Societies 2022, 12(1), 10; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc12010010 - 13 Jan 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3893
Abstract
A common European identity is an important part of the European political lexicon; however, at the institutional level, it was taken seriously only when the economic crisis, the legal challenges of EU integration, and the Brexit story encouraged a fresh look into the [...] Read more.
A common European identity is an important part of the European political lexicon; however, at the institutional level, it was taken seriously only when the economic crisis, the legal challenges of EU integration, and the Brexit story encouraged a fresh look into the problem. Moreover, the European identity problem may be viewed differently from the Western and Eastern European perspectives, which helps to identify the roots of contemporary “official” and “sociological” perceptions of a common European identity. The Standard Eurobarometer (EB) questionaries were used as a proxy to analyze the interest of the EU in a common European identity. We analyzed the types of questions asked from 2004 to 2020 and took a look at the responses. The shifts in the composition of the Standard EB questionaries signal that the “official” understanding of identity is gaining ground against the “sociological” approach. The promotion by official bodies of the EU of a one-sided understanding of a common European identity, based on the Western approach, narrows the field and creates certain risks. In the face of a permanent EU-ropean unity crisis, it would not be wise to lose one of the important instruments that could be successfully used to identify the hidden challenges of the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue EU-Rope: (Trans)nationalism, Media, Legitimacy)
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