Internet: A new potential for European political communication?

Whether the possibilities for new forms of political communication that are offered by the Internet have positive or negative impacts on the constitution of democratic and transnational public spheres is a controversial debate that so far involves much speculation. This paper investigates how hierarchical political communication on the Internet actually is and to what degree it may contribute to a Europeanisation of public spheres. We address both aspects comparatively by contrasting content-analytic findings on political communication in the Internet with similar data drawn from the traditional print media. Our focus is on the political communication made visible by search engines, one of the most frequently used means for online information retrieval. We show that the Internet indeed offers somewhat better opportunities for non-institutional actors, but the discrepancy to the traditional media is not nearly as large as is often assumed. Regarding the potential for Europeanised, transnational communication, our findings indicate that the Internet, at least as far as it is accessed by way of search engines, is as strongly bound to national actors and issues as the traditional media.