The Making of a European Public Sphere Media Discourse and Political Contention

"A democratic European Union, engaging citizens not just technocratic elites, requires a vibrant European public sphere to strengthen integration and legitimacy. Koopmans and Statham lead a first-rate team of international scholars to assess how far such an arena had emerged by the 1990s. Comparing newspaper and online coverage of European affairs in seven nations, supplemented with journalist interviews, the study concludes that the EU is publicly visible today on the policy issues where the EU is most influential, such as the euro. Koopmans and Statham present a highly original and theoretically-rich study providing novel insights into processes of political communications and European Union policymaking."
-Pippa Norris, Harvard University