European Union: Is the Media Friend or Foe?

Over the past several decades, the French, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Austrians, Swiss, and so on have been tempted to surrender their identity to the newly formed culture, “European.” Formed in 1993, The European Union consists of 27 European countries that have agreed to abide by the same foreign and security policies, such as accepting a new currency, the Euro. The European Union mainly formed due to the extreme forces of nationalism, which had previously devastated the entire continent in World War II. In order for the union to perform successfully, a sense of unity among all countries has to be present. To create this new culture, experts thought the television was the best medium to unite people from different countries. In my opinion, the media is the result of a culture, and therefore it is difficult to create a new culture through television. This issue of the International Communication Gazette explains how television has helped the European culture evolve. The authors discuss the two different approaches to culture: primordialist and constructivist. Primordialism holds that national identity is unchangeable and depends largely on biological heritage and history. Constructivism, on the other hand, rejects ethnic homogeneity as a factor and states that culture is based on the recent interaction of knowledge and ideas. Overtime, nationalism increased in Europe, which caused conflict and later, destruction. Therefore, it was a tricky task trying to create a unified culture after just witnessing past fatal experiences between such strong, nationalistic countries. Finally, one of the proposed methods to achieve a coherent and homogenous union was to implement national identity through television. Eventually, the European Parliament approved the idea of controlling media throughout European countries and