Project Abstract
Working Group 2 focuses both external and internal images of the EU and information flows and narratives of the EU inside and outside the Union. Knowledge of EU external images and narratives – in the EU’s neighbourhood and far away from its borders – is the key to analyse gaps between expectations of the EU and the new realities of the changing world. We also examine how images and perceptions may influence the EU’s diplomatic instruments, its strategic partnerships, political dialogues, and its capacities as an – albeit contested – normative power. Over the past decades, political dialogue has advanced as a flexible, multi-purpose tool to express the EU’s multiplicity of voices. WG2 aims to explore the EU’s discursive powers and the ways in which political dialogue can be mobilized to acquire consent and coin European narratives.
Systematic comparative analysis of self and external perceptions in their interaction and co-construction as well as different phases in narrative circulation – formulation, pro
