Communicating Europe: why so controversial? The Parliament’s webTV project

Shackleton, Michael. (2007) Communicating Europe: why so controversial? The Parliament’s webTV project. In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (64Kb) | Preview

Abstract

[From the introduction]. The paper will start by outlining the origins and development of the webTV project in the Parliament and will then turn to the different reasons why it has proved to be controversial, despite (or because of?) the new technical possibilities of the web. It will consider the controversy from three perspectives: first, inter-institutionally, with the Parliament seeking to establish a separate media presence amongst the EU institutions, following the model of other parliaments round the world; second, in terms of the clash between the aim to create a channel perceived as credible from the outside and the desire of those inside to control how they are portrayed; and third, in terms of the increasing tension between a more traditional hierarchically-organised form of communication and a looser more individualistic network approach, where the provider of information can no longer easily dictate the terms of a conversation but is pushed to becoming just another participant. The outcome of the webTV experiment will illustrate the state of the argument in all three of these domains.

Actions (login required)