Television and the European Public Sphere

Abstract

■ The European Union would like European citizens to be more involved in its political processes and to cast off its `democratic deficit`. A functioning European public sphere has been seen as both a solution and an instrument for producing a European identity that might motivate more participation. The main question discussed in this article is what the medium of television can contribute and already has contributed to the construction and existence of a European public sphere. On the way to a (preliminary) conclusion, the article suggests definitions and understandings of the key terms involved and sketches an overview of transnational television in Europe. It then suggests that while the EU may challenge the nationalist idea that a polity must also be a `complete' cultural community, and some seem to think a polity can do without any cultural community to speak of, one should rather think of the EU as a political project that gradually, over time, will add a `European' layer to the identities of Europeans — not least due to the sort of everyday cultural community that television has contributed to since the early 1950s. ■