The European Crisis and the Media: Media Autonomy, Public Perceptions and New Forms of Political Engagement

Abstract

The current economic and political crisis has become an experience that immediately affects the life chances of many citizens. For many Europeans the necessity to cope with the negative consequences of crisis requires immediate responses and the development of resilience. This new immediateness of how Europe is experienced through crisis contrasts sharply with the many hurdles of mediation between the European Union (EU) political system and the lifeworlds of the citizens. Due to the technocratic character of the EU rescue measures, which are taken to secure economic and monetary stability, EU decision makers have become less responsive to the demands for public legitimation. Thus, while directly affecting millions of citizens, the crisis has at the same time widened the EU’s public communication and legitimation deficit. EU institutions and national governments are under constraints to consolidate new regulatory competences, but they are at the same time increasingly deprived of the possibilities to legitimize these increased powers in a democratic fashion (Habermas 2013). They lack, in short, the mediating capacities to include the wider populations in informed opinion making and to respond to the concerns and fears of the people affected by crisis. And it is not only the communication aspect of crisis management that is lacking: the gulf between what is economically required and what is socially and democratically acceptable is widening.