The EUMEPLAT project is organizing its first open conference “Have We (N)ever Been European? Reflections on European Culture and Media”. It will take place online on June 14th, 2021, 10:00 am to 6:30 pm CEST.

EUMEPLAT, a Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation project funded by the European Commission, aims at analyzing the role of media platforms in fostering or dismantling European identity.

According to some scholars, European media have never been European – or at least, they hardly fostered a common identity across the continent. In XIX century, at the rise of modern cultural industry, a few exchanges were given among European countries, with no more than two narrative forms – the English and French novel – struggling for the hegemony, and the latter eventually taking the lead position, as explained by Franco Moretti in his well-known Atlas of the European Novel. One century later, the European movie market would be ruled by American exportations, with exchanges from a European country to another being an exception, rather than the rule – and the more so, one can say, for digital platforms.

The questions behind the EUMEPLAT project — Is there a European media system? Do the media construct Europe, and how? Are audiences European? — are driven by these fundamental debates about Europe, and connect them to media platforms. What is the place of Europe, when compared to the national patterns of newspapers and broadcasting; to the regional organization of media systems [as in Paolo Mancini and Dan Hallin’s model]; to the global hegemony held by American contents and services? For providing an answer, the three-year research – coordinated by IULM University and involving twelve partners in ten countries – called for the participation of high-level scholars in the field of Internet Studies, media history, economics, media systems, media law, data science, sociology, and cultural studies.

EUMEPLAT’s first Open Conference will be the occasion to present the initiative and, what is more relevant, to start discussing some key issues – transnational culture; power and regulation of platforms; funding policies; European public opinion/sphere; Europeanization and common identity – which will play a fundamental part in the EUMEPLAT research, and in the future of the EU and Europe.

International professors and experts will contribute to the discussion on June 14, 2021, and among them Charlotte Galpin, Donatella della Porta, Donald Sassoon, Paolo Mancini and Daniel Hallin.

More information available here.