Europe's Political Communication Deficit

This book investigates the relationship between political communication, politics and policy-making in the European Union over the last twenty years.

It proposes that there is a political communication deficit in the EU, goes on to trace the structural causes of this condition and identifies its long-term consequences: apathy, political ignorance and the alarming disaffection of European Citizens with Europolitics.

It correlates this deficit with the communication strategies and policies that have been pursued by the EC/EU ever since the early 1980s and have led to de-politicization and to the diminishing of the EU's legitimacy as a supra-national political entity.

The book argues that European citizens have been deprived of their most fundamental rights and needs for political information as well as the means for political participation, despite the empowering possibilities offered today by technology.

This communication deficit is thus an active constitutive element of the democratic deficit in Europe.

Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock is Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She has written extensively on European audiovisual policy making, on political communication and on the political economy of the media.