CIEPS -- Climate-Induced European Public Sphere

The CIEPS-project starts with the diagnosis, that public debates on issues like climate change, possess the capacity to establish a European public sphere (EPS). Besides beeing merely a tool for social scientists, conceptualizing the EPS has rather practical implications, such as bridging the gap between EU citizens and the European institutions to strive for greater legitimacy in terms of public accountability, openness and participation. Climate change will have impacts on all regions of the world and cannot be solved by a single nation-state or by a collaborative behavior of few, Since this issue stretches far beyond the boundaries of nation states, climate policies need transnational political debates, decisions and regulations. Moreover in global comparison, ecological debates are particularly pronounced in European countries. The purpose of the transnational CIEPS-project is thus twofold: 1) The first aim is to develop basic knowledge of the structures, logics, and rules of a mediated EPS by observing public debates in traditional news media and the online-sphere and to test if online communication can be the nucleus of a European public sphere. 2) The second aim is to identify commonalities and differences in the climate-debates in all European member states to answer the question if climate change is a common European issue. These questions will be answered by a multi-methodological and highly innovative empirical approach. To achieve this goal, an extensive analysis of different events and media channels in all EU member countries will be carried out: An empirical content-analysis will use a qualitative coding process and afterwards quantifying the results by a quantitative content analysis of the media discourse in traditional news media and the European Online-sphere (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, weblogs). After the analysis of the media debate, these results will be compared with a frame analysis of official political documents deriving from these events to detect commonalities and differences between the public and the political debate. This approach is innovative in the way of doing transnational media research and integrating different languages as well as different media channels in the research design. The focus of the analysis lies in the coverage of three media events, namely the forthcoming 18th Conference-of-the-Parties (COP) in 2012, the publication of the first part of the 5th IPCC-report in 2013 and (3) the forthcoming 19th COP in 2013. Results from this project will give a new perspective on the core question of democratic legitimation in balancing the incongruence of political scope and its public sphere. This project will develop theoretical and practical knowledge for decision-makers by identifying commonalities and differences in climate debates across the European Union and within all EU member states, and by establishing discourse platforms at the policy-science interface on a European level.

Projektbeginn: 15.10.2012
Projektende: 01.06.2013

Dr. Markus Rhomberg

Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen
Lehrstuhl für Politische Kommunikation | davor Juniorprofessur für Politische Kommunikation

Am Seemooser Horn 20
88045 Friedrichshafen

Telefon: +49 7541 6009-1330
Fax: +49 7541 6009-1399
Email: zpk@zu.de
https://www.zu.de/forschung-themen/forschungszentren/zpk/index.php?navid=691925691925

MA Jonas Kaiser