ABOUT ESA'08_
European Summer Academy-
Redefining the online potential of EU news offers
{ European agenda as an overlapping network
of EU news does not exist }
Media maintain a crucial role in the process of ‘Europeanisation’ and in the development of a sense of European identity. However, there are obvious drawbacks in the process of EU communication: media across Europe ‘domesticates’ EU issues and transnational (pan-European) views are missing. As a result, there are only rare exceptions when European Union becomes an item of major importance across media in Europe.
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The European Summer Academy for journalists brings together journalism students and media professionals to a transnational setting in order to learn, analyze and report on European affairs. Lectures and workshops question whether a wide availability of online news sources (Internet media, online data-bases, blogs) offering different (alternative, critical, independent) views on EU policy-making could become useful means in overcoming national and cultural barriers in reporting about European affairs.
In 2008, the European Summer Academy is dedicated to the theme “Reporting Europe from Home”. The theoretical and practical issues discussed in the Academy are structured around the hypothesis that with proliferation of Internet media, there is an increasing need to redefine the potential of new technologies in the EU communication. In foreign news reporting the Internet is often used as a tool of ‘communication’ (for e-mailing, providing online consultations) and ‘production’ (for webcasting, reporting, blogging). From journalistic point of view, however, there is a need to re-assess the potential of the Internet as a mean of ‘information’; or to put it more precise – as a mean to provide news sources offering transnational and alternative views to European policy issues.
Available online information platforms (specialized news portals, data-bases, blogs) that offer rich information with alternative views and transnational perspectives could become useful sources of EU news for journalists. By offering rich information and recognizing common interests of citizens in a pan-European context (rather than in predominantly national) these news sources may help journalists to develop necessary competences and skills to retrieve background information on complex EU matters and develop a shared sense of ‘Europeanness’, which in turn could enrich news and views reported.
Lectures and workshops planned in the Academy combine theory with practice and require, by the end of trainings, each participant to produce EU reports in written or audiovisual form and publish these online.
Challenge yourself - apply now!
(Deadline: April 30, 2008) |
