PERCEIVE project - Deliverable D3.1 "Annex3 - Emilia Romagna (IT)"

Qualitative report on the impact and effectiveness of communication strategies from the semi structured interviews with cohesion policy practitioners (including thirdparty partners in the consortium) regarding Regione Emilia Romagn

The use of social media in EU policy communication and implications for the emergence of a European public sphere

Cohesion policy is the European Union’s (EU) main investment policy and seeks to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion. While accomplishments in this regard are constantly measured, European citizens are not always aware of the policy’s impact and the role the EU plays therein. This is especially relevant as the communication of EU policies is central to the emergence of a European public sphere, an acknowledged condition for European integration. In this paper, we aim at advancing research in this regard through the analysis of cohesion policy communication on the social media channels of ten Local Managing Authorities (LMAs) responsible for managing and communicating structural funds at the local level. By building on a bottom-up construction of shared meaning structures through semi-automatic analysis techniques, we make the following three observations: first, social media communication is indicative of "horizontal Europeanization"; second, Europeanization occurs both in the form of the spontaneous amalgamation of shared discontent expressed by citizens and the institutionalization of top-down EU communication measures adopted by LMAs; and third, a cluster of topics articulated internationally and showcasing a negative attitude towards the EU funding scheme suggests that, counter-intuitively, Euroscepticism seems to facilitate the emergence of a European public sphere

PERCEIVE project - Deliverable D5.1 "Short contribution (report) to be used in dissemination events about the empirical relevance of a social constructivist and discursive approach to EU identity emergence and integration"

European integration has been a long and complex, at times problematic process ever since 1957, encompassing the emergence of new institutions and actors. In spite of the centrality that such institutions and actors play in all Europeans’ everyday life, as of today the European project remains fragile and subject to eroding pressures from factors such as macro-economic cycles and anti-EU political movements, among many others. It is important to advance our insights into how citizens’ knowledge of relevant aspects of everyday social, political, and economic life in the EU is shaped and how this impacts their identification with the European project and affects European integration more generally. We argue that citizens’ understandings of the EU as institution are socially constructed and that communicative and discursive processes play an essential role in these construction processes. Identification and integration essentially depend on such shared social meanings. European studies increasingly recognize the importance of social constructivism and discourse as perspectives to better understand different aspects of European integration – a process through which new supra-national institutions and social identities emerge as well as existent local institutions and identities transform. Different from previous approaches, both social constructivism and a focus on discourse entail that institutions, as well as the identities of social actors, matter in a particular way. That is, they are not given or easy for any political elite to manipulate, rather they get shaped through ongoing social interactions with language playing a central role. Paying close attention to the complexities of integration as a transformative and discursive process seems to be a more promising approach than regarding integration as an exercise of ‘simple’ institutional design. We argue that in spite of the increased importance of social constructivist and discourse approaches in social sciences during the last 30 years, their applications in EU studies, which are more recent, continue to constitute a rather ‘closed’ scholarly field. In order to increase the empirical relevance of social constructivism and discourse in EU studies and beyond, we offer three contributions. First, we review extant literature in this scholarly domain. In particular, we find that work that has fruitfully utilised a social constructivist perspective has somehow spanned three main areas: a) integration as Europeanization of legal systems and norms, b) integration as the Europeanization of discourses on polity ideas and public debates about EU governance, and c) integration as the Europeanization of citizens’ identities and definitions of what ‘Europe’ means. Second, in order to open up this literature to interdisciplinary research we highlight overlaps and parallels especially to institutional organization theory that shares with this literature the social constructivist perspective and has been fruitfully used to analyse questions of institutional change and identity formation. Third and finally, we extend the analytical tool box by highlighting methods that can be used to explore integration and identification from a social constructive and discursive perspective

Beyond financial proxies in Cohesion Policy inputs' monitoring: A system dynamics approach

European Union's Cohesion Policy aims to foster development and reduce disparities among regions by redistributing more than one-third of the European budget. Given the policy's importance and complexity, an elaborated monitoring and evaluation system has been established. While attention has been dedicated to evaluating policy impact, the monitoring of inputs (i.e., allocated financial resources) has been limited to the control of financial dimensions (i.e., funds' absorption rate). As the implementation process entails a sequence of steps, this research explores whether financial proxies alone are adequate to monitor the policy inputs. To test this hypothesis, a system dynamics model is built. Simulations highlight that the absorption rate captures shocks that might occur during the inputs' expenditure with significant delay. To that end, we elaborate three novel operative monitoring indicators (i.e., funds' demand, funds' offer, procedural efficiency), which may overcome the financial indicators' mono-dimensionality and time lags' limitations

Desempeño de la política europea de cohesión y concienciación de los ciudadanos: un marco holístico de dinámica de sistemas

As Cohesion Policy constitutes the major funding scheme of the European Union, not only does literature explore if the policy’s performance is satisfactory but also investigates the extent to which the policy is effectively communicated to citizens. To integrate analysis of implementation and communication, we develop a novel qualitative framework that elicits a holistic analysis of the causal mechanisms behind: (i) the distribution of the Cohesion Policy funds, their management at a local managing authority level and the related impact on projects’ quality, and (ii) the communication processes that underpin citizens’ awareness about the Union’s role in funded projects. The multilevel nature and the dynamic behaviour of the system, as well as its multiple feedback loops, render System Dynamics appropriate as an approach to model its complexity. The proposed framework aims at stimulating a focused discussion on Cohesion Policy by providing policy-making insights for designing efficient schemes to improve the actual and the perceived performances. Finally, it is anticipated to support research in the field from a new organisational perspective through considering the impact of local actors’ structures, procedures and actions on Cohesion Policy outcomes.Dado que la Política de Cohesión constituye el principal programa de financiación de la Unión Europea, la literatura no solo explora si el desempeño de la política es satisfactorio, sino que también investiga hasta qué punto la política se comunica de manera efectiva a los ciudadanos. Para integrar el análisis de implementación y comunicación, desarrollamos un marco cualitativo novedoso que genera un análisis holístico de los mecanismos causales basdos en: (i) la distribución de los fondos de la Política de Cohesión, su gestión a nivel de la autoridad de gestión local y el impacto relacionado en los proyectos calidad y (ii) los procesos de comunicación que apoyan la concienciación de los ciudadanos sobre el papel de la Unión en los proyectos financiados. La naturaleza multi-nivel y el comportamiento dinámico del sistema, así como sus múltiples bucles de retroalimentación, hacen que la Dinámica de Sistemas sea un enfoque apropiado para modelar su complejidad. El marco propuesto tiene como objetivo estimular una discusión centrada en la Política de Cohesión, proporcionando ideas para la formulación de políticas que permitan diseñar esquemas eficientes para así mejorar los resultados reales y percibidos. Finalmente, se anticipa apoyar la investigación en el campo desde una nueva perspectiva organizacional a través de considerar el impacto de las estructuras, procedimientos y acciones de los actores locales en los resultados de la Política de Cohesión

El uso de las redes sociales en la comunicación política de la UE y las implicaciones para el surgimiento de una esfera pública europea

Cohesion policy is the European Union’s (EU) main investment policy and seeks to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion. While accomplishments in this regard are constantly measured, European citizens are not always aware of the policy’s impact and the role the EU plays therein. This is especially relevant as the communication of EU policies is central to the emergence of a European public sphere, an acknowledged condition for European integration. In this paper, we aim at advancing research in this regard through the analysis of cohesion policy communication on the social media channels of ten Local Managing Authorities (LMAs) responsible for managing and communicating structural funds at the local level. By building on a bottom-up construction of shared meaning structures through semi-automatic analysis techniques, we make the following three observations: first, social media communication is indicative of ‘horizontal Europeanization’; second, Europeanization occurs both in the form of the spontaneous amalgamation of shared discontent expressed by citizens and the institutionalization of top-down EU communication measures adopted by LMAs; and third, a cluster of topics articulated internationally and showcasing a negative attitude towards the EU funding scheme suggests that, counter-intuitively, Euroscepticism seems to facilitate the emergence of a European public sphere.La política de cohesión es la principal política de inversión de la Unión Europea (UE) y busca fortalecer la cohesión económica, social y territorial entre las regiones europeas. Aunque los logros en este sentido se miden constantemente, los ciudadanos europeos no siempre son conscientes del impacto de la política y del papel que desempeña en ella la UE. Esto es especialmente relevante ya que la comunicación de las políticas de la UE es fundamental para el surgimiento de una esfera de comunicación pública europea, una condición reconocida para la integración europea. En este artículo, nuestro objetivo es avanzar en la investigación en este respecto a través del análisis de la comunicación de la política de cohesión en los canales de redes sociales de diez Autoridades Administrativas Locales (LMA en inglés) responsables de administrar y comunicar los proyectos financiados a través de estos fondos estructurales a nivel local. En este artículo utilizamos técnicas de análisis semiautomáticos del texto para reconstruir la estructura de significados que constituye las comunicaciones de las LMA en las redes sociales, y llegamos a los siguientes tres resultados: primero, la comunicación en las redes sociales es indicativa de "europeización horizontal"; segundo, la europeización ocurre tanto en la forma de la combinación espontánea del descontento compartido expresado por los ciudadanos, como en la institucionalización de las formas de comunicación originadas centralmente en la UE y adoptada localmente por las LMA; y tercero, encontramos varios temas articulados internacionalmente y que muestran una actitud negativa hacia el esquema de financiación de la UE. Este resultado sugiere que, al contrario de lo que podría parecer, el euroescepticismo parece facilitar el surgimiento de una esfera pública europea

D 3.1 'Qualitative report on the impact and effectiveness of communication strategies from the semi structured interviews with cohesion policy practitioners (including third-party partners in the consortium), written by each partner'

This document is a comparative synthesis of the reports on regional case studies written by PERCEIVE's partners. Each report is based both on an original data collection and on the analysis of the focus group's section that addresses communication issues. Each partner collected national and/or regional communication plans, which were mostly used for the first chapter of this report: "Communication strategy at different levels and LMAs' organization.

The use of social media in EU policy communication and implications for the emergence of a European public sphere

Cohesion policy is the European Union\u2019s (EU) main investment policy and seeks to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion. While accomplishments in this regard are constantly measured, European citizens are not always aware of the policy\u2019s impact and the role the EU plays therein. This is especially relevant as the communication of EU policies is central to the emergence of a European public sphere, an acknowledged condition for European integration. In this paper, we aim at advancing research in this regard through the analysis of cohesion policy communication on the social media channels of ten Local Managing Authorities (LMAs) responsible for managing and communicating structural funds at the local level. By building on a bottom-up construction of shared meaning structures through semi-automatic analysis techniques, we make the following three observations: first, social media communication is indicative of \u2018horizontal Europeanization\u2019; second, Europeanization occurs both in the form of the spontaneous amalgamation of shared discontent expressed by citizens and the institutionalization of top-down EU communication measures adopted by LMAs; and third, a cluster of topics articulated internationally and showcasing a negative attitude towards the EU funding scheme suggests that, counter-intuitively, Euroscepticism seems to facilitate the emergence of a European public sphere

PERCEIVE project - Deliverable D6.1 "Report on causal qualitative model"

The scope of the Deliverable 6.1 is to introduce the causal qualitative model developed in the context of the PERCEIVE project, as a part of the Working Package 6. The report begins with a short introduction that highlights the necessity of developing a model for simulating: (i) the manner in which the European Cohesion Policy funds are distributed among the regions under study and the factors that affect the related absorption, along with the (ii) the diverse streams of communication of the European Cohesion Policy projects and outcomes that influence the citizens awareness. The analysis of the system is focused on the EU structural funds, namely the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) during the two previous programming periods (i.e. 2000-2006, 2007-2013). In fact, the multilevel nature of the system (i.e. EU, regions, beneficiaries), the dynamic behaviour over the programming periods, as well as the complexity reflected through the multiple intertwined feedback loops render the System Dynamics methodology as the appropriate approach to map and model the system under study. Thus, we briefly present the basic elements and procedures of System Dynamics technique

PERCEIVE project - Deliverable D5.4 "Report of the comparative analysis of the correlation between topics emergent from regional discourses on the one hand, and the awareness and perceptions of the EU (from Eurobarometer) on the other hand"

The report at hand focuses on the statistical test of an eventual relationship between media representation of EU regional cohesion policy, among other explanatory variables, and individuals’ level of European identification as well as their different definitions of being European. At present time, it is largely acknowledged that individuals do not possess an innate sense of being European, rather, the meaning of such status is socially constructed. Accordingly, extant research has explored the role of the media in shaping the opinions of the general public. However, only recently has research started focusing on the potential role of cohesion policy in shaping EU identity and many aspects of this phenomenon are still unexplored. We claim that by extending knowledge in this still unfolding area our work contributes to the wider debate on European identity in several ways: a) by performing a media analysis in seven different countries we offer one of the first international evidences as most of the media analyses are conducted in individual national contexts; b) our study is based on a large ad-hoc designed survey which allows us to capture so far largely overlooked aspects of EU identity such as the multiplicity and synchronicity of levels – i.e. individual, regional and national – in a way that Eurobarometer-based research could not do so far; c) our survey also allowed us to explore in unprecedented depth the factors associated with different definitions of being European; d) we analyse media in a bottom-up way, that is, without using pre-coded frames of valence characterising most of extant research; e) along with standard interpretive techniques, we use formal methods for representing national media spaces such as topic modelling and sentiment analysis. We believe that this mixed method approach makes our study more replicable than purely qualitative ones, still, nuances and complexities of extracting meaning from text are better preserved than purely quantitative studies