This document summarizes a presentation on comparing public spheres. It discusses different models of public spheres, challenges in comparing public spheres across countries, and findings from analyses of several issues in European public spheres. Key findings include that debates are often framed in national rather than European terms, there are both pan-European and nationally-focused public spheres, and media play both dependent and independent roles in shaping public debates. The document outlines areas for further research on the rise of populism and roles of traditional and new media.

1. Comparing Public Spheres
Professor John Downey
Loughborough University
European University Institute
June 2014

2. The Idea of the Public Sphere
• Most famously associated with Habermas but
also in C20th Arendt and Dewey;
• Roots in an Aristotelian view of active citizenship;
• Normative as well as empirical concept –
specifying conditions for democracy – the only
force permitted is the force of the better
argument;
• The rise of the public sphere;
• And its fall?
• The public sphere in flux and subject to change.

3. Modes of ‘Publicness’
• The everyday – from the coffehouse to the public house ;
• The occasional – events, protests;
• The mass-mediated;
• ‘New media’;
• The private and the public;
• Intimate sphere; the sphere of the state; and that of
business;
• Colonization of the lifeworld and the public sphere by
economic and political elites;
• Ability of journalists to resist pressure from elites;
• Ability of resource poor groups to influence agenda;
• Mediatization thesis – power of media over politics.

4. Impact of news impact
• Are media the independent or the dependent
variable? Cause or effect? Or both?
• Media effects?
• Agenda-setting: media influence what we
think about rather than causing us to think in
particular ways;
• Complex causation;
• Valence and visibility.

5. Different models of the public sphere
• Deliberative – civility, internal pluralism, inclusive;
• Liberal – elite driven, civility, restricted pluralism;
• Republican – inclusive, external pluralism, uncivil;
• ‘Multicultural’ public sphere – inclusive, different
modes of discourse;
• Which models correspond best to historical and
contemporary manifestations of the public?

6. Comparison as a method
• Which unit of analysis? The national?
• But that may overlook differences (class, ethnic)
differences within the state;
• Class-based publics;
• And it may overlook transnational publics;
• Comparing apples with pommes;
• What to count? How to count?
• How to explain the results?
• Comparisons over time…much less common.

7. What to measure and how?
• Intensity of debate – driven by national elite dissensus;
• Political parallelism - varieties;
• Economic parallelism – ‘paid news’;
• External pluralism – intra-system;
• Is greater pluralism always a good thing?
• Internal pluralism – intra-institution;
• Inclusiveness of debate;
• Polarization of debate;
• Just the news media or popular cultural forms as well?
• Content analysis;
• Discourse analysis;
• Frame analysis – hard to operationalise for large data sets;
• Decline in news consumption.

8. European versus national public
spheres
• European Union is referred to the best
example of cosmopolitan citizenship;
• Limits to this ‘imagined community’?
• Also recognition of a ‘democratic deficit’ –
distance between citizens and institutions and
lack of a European ‘we’;
• Can a European public sphere be created that
helps to create this sense of we that is
essential to a strong democracy?

9. Institutional versus culturalist
approaches
• Institutional approach stresses importance of
pan-European political and media institutions;
• Culturalist approach looks at nationally
interlocking ‘national’ public spheres;
• But is there much evidence of a sense of ‘we
Europeans’ in the different European public
spheres?

10. Berlusconi
• Why choose Berlusconi? Seemed to be a
figure that united non-Italian European elite in
condemnation;
• ‘Gaffe’ prone;
• Kapo;
• How is the conflict framed? Left v Right?
Nation v Nation?

11. What we found?
• Discourse intensity much higher in Germany and Italy;
• Seen in national terms by both left and right in each
country;
• Newspapers in other countries see this as an opportunity to
use ethno-national stereotypes of both Germans and
Italians;
• Insult to victims and survivors of the Shoah hardly
mentioned!
• Essentially national public spheres;
• Predominance of ethno-national stereotypes in analysis of
European problems – Eurocrisis;
• Rise of neo-populism.

12. ‘We Europeans’ united against ‘the
Other’? Turkish accession
• Islam and Ottoman Empire used historically as a
way to define European, Christian identity;
• Identification of frames:
• Clash of Civilisations, Christian/ethno-nationalist
version;
• Clash of civilisations, liberal version;
• Multiculturalist frame;
• Liberal individualist frame;
• Economic consequences.

13. What we found
• Intensity much higher in France, Germany, and
Turkey than in USA, UK, Slovenia;
• Why? Elite consensus in USA and UK? Distance?
Geopolitical reasons? Dominance of
multiculturalist frame;
• France – dominated by liberal version of Clash of
Civilisation;
• Germany – ethno-nationalist version of Clash of
Civilisation thesis;
• Turkey – nationalist frames;

14. ‘We Europeans’ united against ‘the
Other’? The USA
• Historical and contemporary reciprocal uses of
America and Europe to define identities;
• ‘Old’ and ‘new’ Europe and the invasion of
Iraq;
• Old – social democratic, anti-invasion;
• New – neo-liberal, pro-invasion;
• To what extent are these frames distributed
across Europe?

15. Sample
• Czech Republic, Germany, France, Slovenia,
UK, Switzerland, Slovakia;
• ‘quality’, finnce and regional/’tabloid’ papers;
• Using claims-making method and keyword
occurrence;
• Network analysis.

16. What we found
• New Europe – UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia;
• Old Europe – France, Germany, Slovenia;
• Prominence of national sources in each country;
• Leaders and followers – hierarchy of influence;
• Old Europe network and a new Europe network;
• Explanations: media as dependent and independent
variable;
• Models of capitalism and impact on public opinion;
• Resonates with reporting of Eurocrisis and responses to
it?

17. Debating the European Constitution
• Centrality of national elites to debate in each country;
• Intensity of debate higher in France and UK: elite
dissensus (but over different issues);
• Germany relatively low intensity (because of elite
national consensus);
• Advocacy papers of left and right but they report the
same issues and the same people;
• Inclusiveness – dependent upon political system –
majoritarian systems tend to be more exclusive;
• Big differences between elite and popular papers –
class-based publics. Not true for other issues eg
immigration.

18. Research Agenda
• Uneven rise of neo-populism in EU;
• Are ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media implicated in
this? How?
• Complex causation with media reporting and
new media (possible) causal conditions (along
with others: unemployment, living standards,
immigration, electoral system, …)
• Method: Qualitative Comparative Analysis
doing longitudinal analysis.