Eating cake at the European Round Table: Panem et Circenses in the mediation of the European Union's 50th anniversary by the British and the Irish Press
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Ruxandra Trandafoiu
Abstract
This article analyses the intersecting emotive expressions of nationalism, Euroscepticism, and Europeanness in Britain and Ireland during the European Union's 50th birthday festivities in March 2007. Such discursive manifestations in the Irish and British national press were occasioned by the display and public consumption of fifty-four national cakes at the Berlin Volkfest. The public, ritualistic, and convivial eating of national foods, represented a departure from the usual stale recipe of political summits, and was supposed to excite feelings of identity with the European Union project. Yet the event occasioned press, politicians, and public to delve into backward looking nationalist projections, the result of which was a media event riddled by fragmentation and diverging readings, which have to be interpreted via the multifarious relationships between globalization, national dishes and national identity.
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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- Eating cake at the European Round Table: Panem et Circenses in the mediation of the European Union's 50th anniversary by the British and the Irish Press
- Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Media events, globalization and cultural change: An introduction to the special issue
- Rethinking media events in the context of a global public sphere: Exploring the audience of global disasters in Greece
- Inside the media event: Examining the media practices of Dissent! at the Hori-Zone eco-village at the 2005 G8 Gleneagles Summit
- ‘News media’-media events: Terrorist acts as media events
- Mediated events in political communication: A case study on the German European Union Council Presidency 2007
- Eating cake at the European Round Table: Panem et Circenses in the mediation of the European Union's 50th anniversary by the British and the Irish Press
- Contributors
