Vol 9, No 1 (2017)
All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
Vol 9, No 1 (2017)
Table of Contents
Articles
Camelia Cmeciu
EU Issues and Social Media
Communicating anti-Violence Policy on Twitter:The European Commission and #SayNoStopVAW (PDF)
Tommaso Trillo
Abstract: On November 25th, 2016, EU Commissioner Vera Jourova announced that the 2016 International day for the elimination of violence against women (IDEVAW) would mark the start of ‘a focused year of action to combat violence against women’. The campaign was accompanied by an official Twitter hashtag: #SayNoStopVAW. This paper aims at exploring a sample of just over 2,000 tweets gathered in the first month of the campaign through multimodal analysis. Results are as follows. The number of users involved in the campaign remained remarkably limited. Despite assertive language, the campaign mostly revolved around awareness raising. Furthermore, the actual message of the campaign often ‘bent’ the fight for the elimination of violence against women to make it fit other purposes, most prominently economic growth. Support for the cause because of its intrinsic value remained marginal throughout the campaign.
Wrocław as a European Capital of Culture 2016.Brand Building on Facebook. (PDF)
Urszula Wich-Szymczak
Abstract: The article contains research in two fields of image building. The first is describing general thoughts about city marketing communication, brand building and current trends in this area. Author pays attention to the aesthetics issue, that creates the possibility for different organizations to affect their audience through a whole range of sensory stimulators, thereby creating the conditions of mutual satisfaction. Then the author tries to answer the questions: what should be done to make the city brand exist in consumers' minds in the twenty-first century? How to exist in virtual reality without visual identification? Next step is to overview the book of visual identification of Wrocław ECOC. The second area of interest is cumulated around image building on official Facebook profile of Wroclaw ECOC. It is a platform for opinion exchange. Its focuses on a fourfold type of creation: creation of the individual, creation of the organization, creation of the company, and finally creation of the brand.
Insights into the Dialogic Communication on the ‘Debating Europe’ Internet Channels (PDF)
Alexandra Bardan
Abstract: This article aims to provide an overview of the online interaction of the ‘Debating Europe’ platform using the theoretical framework of dialogic communication. A brief historical approach of the notion “Web 2.0” further informs about the functions of the ‘Debating Europe’ platform and its mission statement. Related work opens an interrogation on the ‘Debating Europe’ platform as a virtual space meant to connect European citizens and politicians in online debates concerning EU matters. The empirical study regards the use of dialogic principles on the ‘Debating Europe’ platform, focusing on a cross comparison of its three Internet channels: the website, the Facebook page and the Twitter account. The results indicate the website as the main dialogic channel, while Facebook and Twitter fulfill mainly information dissemination purposes.
EU Issues and the ‘Debating Europe’ platform
Tulia Maria Cășvean, Mihaela Păun
Abstract: The new digital world may propagate old subjects, such violence in and through new media. Violent behavior is a concerning topic for academia, EU institutions and the large public that could be debated on online platforms which take the citizens’ questions and comments directly to policy makers for them to respond. ‘Debating Europe’ is a multi-channel online platform that encourages citizen to debate diverse topics that include violent behavior. Acknowledging that participants could have their own interests, divergent from those of the institution, legitimating or delegitimating the topic, our intention is to observe and analyze through the lens of frame analysis the citizens’ communicative practice on the SMARTER channel of the Debating Europe platform and their perceptions and attitudes towards the violent behavior topic in Europe.
Visualizing Europe’s Refugee Crisis on the‘Debating Europe’ Platform (PDF)
Camelia Cmeciu
Abstract: The images picturing the refugee crisis are heavily emotion-laden and the picture of the dead boy Aylan on the beach is such an example. Besides newspapers where pictures of refugees have been used to stir the readers’ attention, debating platforms have used visual images to initiate debates with the EU citizens about Europe’s refugee crisis. Designed on a ‘bottom-up approach’, the ‘Debating Europe’ platform empowers citizens by encouraging a dialogue between Europe’s policymakers and experts, on the one hand, and citizens, on the other hand. Each debate embeds an issue to be addressed and visual images which may serve as incentives for a vivid debate. The selection of these visuals plays a significant role in the representation of a particular issue. The sample used for this qualitative analysis consists of the visual images (photographs and infographics) of nine debates on Europe’s refugee crisis (2013-2015). Since Europe’s refugee crisis is both about attributing responsibility and human interest, we will provide an integrated visual framework for our analysis. Using a qualitative content analysis of the visual images depicting the refugee crisis we want to identify (1) the types and the salience of the participants depicted, (2) the communication strategies and the (re)bordering issues used to (de)legitimate these represented participants, (3) the types of emotions used by the ‘Debating Europe’ platform to visually frame the refugee crisis.
e-Citizens’ Perspectives about Educationon the ‘Debating Europe’ Platform (PDF)
Mihaela Păun
Abstract: In order to have a stronger relation with the citizens, the governments, in this case the institutions of European Union, created media platforms. In the context of the European (digitalized) global village (Ciastellardi, Patti, 2011, p. 15), all public institutions, especially the European Union’s agencies, directorates and units needed to enhance their online visibility through a complex array of communication platforms – websites, webcast portals, social media pages or any other type of virtual platforms - websites, webcast portals, social media pages or any other type of virtual platforms -, thus converting the offline motto “United in diversity” in a virtual unity in diversity. Responding to the evolution of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the platform www.debatingeurope.eu was launched in September 2011 by the Brussels-based think tank Friends of Europe and Europe’s World, the only Europe-wide policy journal, in partnership with the European Parliament, Microsoft and Gallup, “to encourage a genuine conversation between Europe’s politicians and the citizens they serve – and that means taking YOUR questions, comments and ideas directly to policy makers for them to respond”. Starting from the objective of the platform, I focused this research on one of the six channels of ‘Debating Europe’, namely “Smarter Europe” to find the specific frames that e-citizens – the public, PR specialists, officials or analysts - may present, interpret and assign to the specific topics, policies, and directives of the European Union. My study will examine the most relevant frames and issues associated with education in Europe, the most commented topics and their relevance in accordance with the political and social problems of European Union.