Media relations in the Council of the European Union: insights into the Council press officers' professional practices

• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Date: 01 August 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1455
• Author: Chiara Valentini,Bo Laursen

■Academic Paper

Media relations in the Council of the

European Union: insights into the Council

press officers’professional practices

Bo Laursen*and Chiara Valentini

Department of Business Communication, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Government communication plays a key role in democratic societies as it helps public understanding of government

policies and raises awareness of the roles and actions of decision makers. Within the European Union (EU) polity,

communication plays a crucial role for citizens’support for the European integration process. Despite the increasing

relevance of communication about major activities of the EU, studies on the EU institutions’communications are

scarce, and very little is currently known about the external communication of the Council of the EU. Focusing on

the media relations activities of the Council, this paper investigates the communication practices and roles of press

officers working in the Council’s General Secretariat as perceived by these government communicators themselves.

Qualitative interviews with the press officers, analysis of Council documents, participation in their work processes

and observations of their professional behaviour were used to establish the empirical basis of the study.The findings

highlight the apolitical and reactive nature of these European civil servants’communication activities and identify

some of the institutional and political challenges that they face in the performance of their professional duties.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

European Union (EU) institutions’external commu-

nications play an important role for citizens’support

for the EU and the European integration process

(Valentini, 2008). Several scholars (e.g. Meyer, 1999;

Sifft et al., 2007) have pointed out that the increasing

transfer of political power from European nation-

states to the EU without a corresponding increase

in public discourses about the EU constitutes a major

problem for popular support for the European

integration process and the EU. The EU does not

necessarily lack democratic legitimacy (Moravcsik,

2002) but rather has a communication deficit that

constitutes a barrier to public participation. Public

participation and popular support not only are fun-

damental for democracy and democratic institutions

but also are needed if the EU wants to continue its

integration process (Sifft et al., 2007). European

citizens’knowledge of EU institutions, activities

and policies is a prerequisite for their support to

the EU polity and their participation in discussions

of EU issues (Valentini, 2008) and to a certain extent

depends on the EU institutions’own provision of

information about themselves and their activities.

The nature of the information provided by the EU

institutions to various external stakeholders and

the way this information is delivered are thus of

great importance for remedying the EU’s much

debated communication deficit and thereby enhancing

public participation and support. The mass media

constitute a key stakeholder group in this respect

because one of the essential functions of the mass

media in democratic societies is to monitor political

forums (Christians et al., 2009: 125; Bennett and

Entman, 2001), such as the EU institutions, and to

relay information about ‘government actions, prob-

lems, issues, and politics affecting the public’

(Christians et al., 2009: 144) between these forums

and the citizens. The works of Morgan (1995) and

Statham (2008) suggest that the EU institutions’

own press officers constitute one of the most impor-

tant sources when EU correspondents cover EU

issues for their readerships. On the basis of the

assumption that the media’s portrayal of the EU

institutions and EU politics to a certain extent

depends on the messages relayed by the EU

*Correspondence to: Bo Laursen, Department of Business Com-

munication, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.

E-mail: bola@asb.dk

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 13 Number 3 pp 230–238 (2013)

Published online 19 February 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1455

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.