Abstract
This article approaches the subject of the global recognition of the term ‘Normative Power Europe’ in external energy governance by engaging with the concept of strategic narratives. The article considers reactions to the European Union (EU) as a normative energy actor within a tripartite scheme of strategic narrative formation, projection and reception. The definition of a narrative suggests the presence of an actor, an action, a goal or intention, a scene and instrument. Those were identified for the emerging ‘Sustainable Energy Europe’ narrative and tested in one empirical case study: Twitter communications surrounding the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2013. In its method, our analysis is among the first to explore empirically the EU’s social media communication efforts. Answering a call for richer methodologies, which view social media data not as ‘quantitative data, rather qualitative data on a quantitative scale’, our analysis uses an original methodology and codes the Twitter data using a nuanced qualitative framework.
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Notes
Tweets were gathered using software developed and operated by Professor Mike Thelwall of the Cybermetrics Group at Wolverhampton University, to whom this project is indebted. Details of the Cybermetrics Group can be found at: cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html. The project conformed with the University of Leicester Ethics Committee Regulations on data protection and privacy, and received approval before data gathering was undertaken. The project leaders also wish to express their sincere thanks to the three Twitter coders: Jasmin Lenz, Simon Lindmayer and Dorethea Stampfer, Technischen Universität Darmstadt post-graduate students.
For example, NGOs refers to WWF and two other country-specific NGOs; BRICS refers to several mentions of Russia, a couple of South Africa and a handful of China. India and Brazil were not visible; EU MS actors could mean the whole MS, in which case Germany was most visible, or representatives of those MS, like the city council of Barcelona.
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Acknowledgements
The research funded reported in this article is part of a larger project – a Jean Monnet Multilateral Research Group (with Natalia Chaban of the University of Canterbury in the lead, and as partners Michèle Knodt of the Technische Universität Darmstadt and Amy Verdun of the University of Victoria). Project title: ‘External Images of the EU’ (EXIE). The group is grateful for financial support from the European Commission during the 2-year project 2012–2014. EXIE came together three times for training purposes and for coordinating the research. An earlier version of this article was presented at the third workshop held at the University of Pretoria 22–26 April 2014, the ISA Convention in New Orleans 18–21 February 2015, New Zealand EU Centres Network International Symposium ‘Strategic Narratives of Identity’ 27 February 2015 at University of Canterbury, NZ, and prepared for delivery at the EISA Conference 23–26 September 2015. The authors thank the Technische Universität Darmstadt postgraduate students who undertook the coding for this article, as well as the participants of the EXIE workshop, the guest editors of this special issue, and the two anonymous reviewers of the journal, for constructive criticism and suggestions on the earlier drafts.
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Bain, J., Chaban, N. An emerging EU strategic narrative? Twitter communication during the EU’s sustainable energy week. Comp Eur Polit 15, 135–155 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2016.17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2016.17