“The Europeanisation Of Identities and Narratives Through Everyday Practices: Part 2”
Chair(s): Alexander Brand (Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences)
So far, most analyses of how Europeans imagine, perceive, narrate, and discursively construct “Europe” cast the issue of an eventually emerging European identity in more strictly political terms. Consequently, knowledge of, and allegiance towards the EU/Europe, merging news agendas across different European media contexts, or overlapping values and shared political self-understandings are at the centre of gravity of these traditional studies. We aim at something different in that we put people’s everyday (and supposedly non-political) activities, their resulting patterns of identification and identity change centre stage. Our starting point are lifeworldly contexts and phenomena in the realms of sport, culture, literature, movies, fandom, leisure time activities, job and student mobilities, tourism, as well as transboundary cross-border regional experiences associated with forms of “normal” life. The panel aims at discussing different and new ways of how identities and narrative and forms of citizenship in the context of Europe are formed.
Presentations of the Symposium
Playing through to Europe? Depiction and Reception of the First World War in the Videogame Valiant Hearts
Jakub Sindelar
Charles University
The video game Valiant Hearts, released in 2014 for the First World War centenary, sold over 2.5 million copies and can be considered one of the major contemporary pop-culture historical representations of this war shaping public interpretations of this event. The paper explores how Valiant Hearts, as a kind of informal institution affecting historical remembrance, constructs and encourages a specific framing through the deployment of Europeanizing elements of anti-war narrative, Franco-German reconciliation narrative, and the de-nationalizing logic that indirectly legitimizes the European integration. The analysis of the videogame in the context of the historical film Merry Christmas (2005) is complemented with a close reading of illustrative empirical examples of Let’s Plays (paratextual user-generated videos where people record themselves while playing videogames) that indicate how Europeans of different national backgrounds interact with the game Valiant Hearts. The examined cases point to how the everyday, seemingly apolitical leisure activity of playing and watching videogames dealing with history can advance Europeanizing narratives and present occasions for informal Europeanization.
Sensing, Imagining, Doing Europe: Europeanisation in the Boundary-work of Welcome Cultures
Dorte Jagetic Andersen1, Lola Aubry2
1University of Southern Denmark, 2University of Luxembourg, UniGR - Center for Border Studies
In the paper, we shed light on and problematize the everyday sensing, imagining, and doing of Europe in the boundary work of welcome cultures. Following Della Porta (della Porta, 2018) we contend, that the ad-hoc welcoming activities performed by citizens during “the long summer of migration” in 2015 created new possibilities for Europeanisation-processes understood as material-discursive activities and processes envisioning Europe as a troubled topos for political, democratic participation. When Europe is on the radar in welcoming activities, it is as a (highly evasive) bordered territory articulated in policing and state violence (Paasi et al., 2019). However, we read the activities as openings for imagining and doing borders beyond institutional violence. Hence, we insist on the productivity of these practices, and it is our argument, that through these everyday activities of welcoming, other spaces emerge, heterotopia following Michel Foucault (1984), materialized as “elsewheres” articulated in resistance to and as well as mirroring and mimicking EU and state bordering. We thereby understand the European welcome culture as opening for renegotiating and reimagining the contours of Europe as sensed, imagined and performed in everyday practices. Grasping these everyday re-articulations and enactments of Europe imply a close-up and sustained study of practice enabled only by ethnographic methods, erasing scalar and level distinctions and being attentive to horizontal relations of power and meaning making. Our arguments thus found in ethnographic work done over the last four years in welcome cultures in Paris and Flensburg respectively, providing us with in situ sites of articulations.
Becoming European Through (Football) Media? A Comparative Analysis of German, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish media outlets
Jonas Biel, Tobias Finger, Arne Niemann, Vincent Reinke
University of Mainz
During past decades, men’s elite club football in Europe has undergone a profound transformation towards the Europeanization of its administrative and competitive structures. As a result, football fans are increasingly exposed to European influences. These dynamics shape fans’ perceptions of and orientations towards Europe and contribute to constructions of collective identities. Football being a strongly mediatized sport, fans’ exposure to European influences, and consequently, their constructions of identity, are highly dependent upon the representation of Europe in football media. To analyze this, we carry out a quantitative analysis of text-based online news media. Using selected German, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish media outlets, we examine the extent and the patterned variation of media representation of Europe in football news articles in a comparative fashion.
Collective Securitisation in the EU: The Case of Disinformation
Sophie Vériter
Leiden University, Netherlands, The
Sperling and Webber (2019) argue that European Union (EU) institutions may act as a collective securitising agent, generating new fields of policy through shared ideas of security threats. They contend that this process unfolds through ‘recursive interaction’ between a collective organisation – the EU – and its audience – the Member States. However, it remains unclear how Member States influence EU collective securitisation, what the ‘recursive interaction’ consists of, and how this impacts European integration. Building on the theoretical framework of Sperling and Webber, this contribution offers a single-case analysis of EU collective securitisation to unveil Member States’ agency in this process and reveal its impact on the European integration of security policies. It examines the puzzling the case of disinformation, which has grown from a quasi-inexistent concern to a notable threat to the EU over the past decade.
Disinformation, “the intentional and systematic manipulation of information deceiving a target audience to cause public harm, generate profit and/or advance political goals” (Vériter et al., 2020), was initially dealt with through national policies, then via the Common Foreign and Security Policy, and progressively with the reluctant engagement of the European Commission. “The Commission was very much sceptical (…) it’s not our job.” explained a European Commission official who was involved in the genesis of common policies against disinformation (Interview #29). Eventually, the Action Plan Against Disinformation has empowered the EU to combat information disorder in and out of its borders. The Strategic Compass even vowed to tackle information manipulation through missions and operations.
Overall, the EU has primarily tackled disinformation as an external security threat. However, early proposals called for internal and external policies, emphasizing awareness, media literacy, and support for journalism (obtained through interviews). How did the collective securitisation of disinformation happen, which role did states play in this process, and what are the consequences for the European integration of counter-disinformation policies? This paper uses qualitative methods and builds on varied primary sources analysed in triangulation, including 40+ interviews with policy-makers, official meeting minutes, press releases, and voting records. Its main findings highlight the crucial role of the Ukraine crisis and the Baltic States in the generation of disinformation as a security threat for Europe, with far-reaching consequences on the EU’s response. This contribution does not aim at generalising its findings beyond this case, but rather explaining one particularly puzzling event that deepens our understanding of EU collective securitisation and Europeanisation of “non-common” policies.
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