Diversity and the European public sphere: The case of United Kingdom

The present report is one of the sixteen country studies that have been produced by the EUROSPHERE Consortium. EUROSPHERE is an integrated project which is funded by the European Commission within the EU’s 6th Framework Programme. The EUROSPHERE Consortium comprises seventeen European universities and research institutes and approximately 100 researchers work in the project's different parts and phases. Two of our partners have now left the Consortium after having successfully completed their tasks in the project. The project is coordinated by this author on behalf of the University of Bergen. EUROSPHERE was launched in February 2007 and will go on until March 2012. The main objective of EUROSPHERE is to create innovative perspectives on the European public spheres and to identify the conditions that enable or undermine the articulation of democratic and inclusive European public spheres. The focus is on how participation of different kinds of social and political actors in the public debates – political parties, social movement and non-governmental organizations, think tanks and research institutes, and newspapers and TV broadcasters – shape the articulation and structuring of the emerging public European public sphere. The research plan of the project comprises synchronized data collection and analysis activities in sixteen countries as well as creation of a EUROSPHERE Knowledgebase on the European organizations that are participating in public debates at local, national and European levels. In addition to regular research and academic dissemination activities, EUROSPHERE organizes four large-scale international conferences, two European Forums, and four researcher training and PhD courses. The EUROSPHERE Country Reports Series represents the finalization of the very first step of a comprehensive comparative research programme. The aim of this series is to provide a brief summary of a huge data material collected by the project researchers. Along with the EUROSPHERE Knowledgebase that we created, these reports will be a basis and data search guide for the forthcoming comparative studies of sixteen countries. Therefore, the primary readership target of these reports is the EUROSPHERE researchers who are to conduct twelve inter-related comparative studies of different aspects of the European public spheres. This primary function of the report series necessitated prioritization of a descriptive approach at this stage of our research. Explanations of the findings and applications of theory are identified in our plans as the task of the work groups who will do the comparative analyses, as we believe cross-contextual comparisons and understanding of the particularities of specific contexts should go together in order to obtain a more enhanced picture of reality. More information about EUROSPHERE can be found in our frequently visited webpage. My task in this foreword is to give the background of the EUROSPHERE Country Report Series. In the following, I will briefly present the logic behind the project and the methodological approaches in selection of the cases – that is, organizations and respondents.