Special issue editorial: Platformisation of news and interactions: Regional contexts of crisis in trust

Abstract

This OBS* Special Issue has been organized within the remit of the EUMEPLAT research consortia, which is subordinate to the theme: European Media Platforms –Assessing Positive and Negative Externalities for European Culture. The term ‘externalities’ here metaphorically refers to the logics of platforms that impact media use and sharing, with implications as regards the definition and renegotiation of meanings of European identity, citizenship, community –both physical and imaginary –and belongingness. Distinguishing the European polity, which takes form in European institutions, from European culture, as something much more plural than the polity, Jostein Gripsrud (2007) referred to television as assuming a particularly important role in fostering a sentiment of European-ness, so that ‘European citizens’ may ‘in time have acquired a sense of themselves as also Europeans, not just German, British, Estonian, etc.’ (490). This secondary habitus would correspond to an additional layer in ‘affiliations and affinities’ (Ibid.), similar to national identity albeit less intense. Gripsrud, in fact, does not mention European-ness nor Europeanity, but rather speaks of the European public sphere as a broad cultural community, to which television has contributed on the quotidian level by informally disseminating factors and contexts that are an integral part of the construction of European identity, without challenging the sociocultural distinctions between nation-States.