Introduction
Broadly speaking, a network defines on one hand a certain number of objects or entities –physical or not– connected to each other, and on the other hand the whole relations that comes out from the interconnection. From this point of view, networks are a subsequent part of European history. There are many examples, in many different realms, of European networking. To develop trade and economic activities, European cities have built very early formal or informal networks. We find one of the most successful example in the Middle Ages with the Hanseatic League[1], which, by extent, has covered more than economical aspects. For centuries, monastic networks have as well contributed to link and integrate Western and Eastern Europe (Benedictine or Cistercians for example)[2]. And it would take ages to describe even briefly the networks of intellectual and knowledge exchange from the Renaissance to Erasmus or Leonardo programs.
Looking back to European History makes us understand the europeanity of networking. It is therefore interesting to look for an insight of how European networks are in the cyberspace today. Hypertextuality is the root of internet. An hypertext is an informatics procedure that links a word, a paragraph, an image, a video to an other word, paragraph, image, video (or any content present in the webpage). This procedure gives the reader the possibility to chose his/her path within a document as he/she is directed nearly instantaneously to the part of the document on which he/she wants to focus. The reader builds his/her own reading path according to his/her centre of interests.
Hypertextuality is the key in networking isolated elements because it overcomes physical obstacle and reduces time delays. Therefore European online networks are more easily and essentially transnational. They are the translation in the world-wide-web of several elements that make the reality of Europe today. We will proceed in describing three different types of pro-European websites networks which are the following : institutional, political and civil society networks. We are aware that many others realms are networking on a European basis such as lobby and corporatist activities. Nevertheless our goal here is to focus on networks which have a various public nature and visibility in the real life. By doing so we hope being able to stress common points and differences, advantages and drawbacks of the cyber European networks.
For each three, we will pick up two relevant examples of websites and compare them to the light of questions such as :
- Are symbols and values present ? To what do they mainly refer ?
- What are the tools by which they are staged (design, audio, video etc.)
- What is their networking strategy(ies) ?
- How is hypertextuality used ? (internal or external links ? towards whom and why ?)
And in the end we will try to understand what does the network bring to the achievement of the website’s goal.
Institutional network
Europe exists empirically first and foremost through its institutions which make it highly visible. The network of European institutions relies on social interactions between organizations and individuals. Its goal is the ruling of European policy in the most effective way possible.
The cyber network of European institutions is composed of websites of two main origins : the European Union (EU) portals, and websites of permanent representation of the member-states in Brussels. Both of them have a high legitimacy and are always on the top in the search engines results. To that extent, their online visibility is quite equivalent to the real life one. Even though both components of the institutional network have a quite similar content, we will notice some differences by going for further examination of, first, the website of the EU-commission, and then the website of the French Permanent Representation in Brussels.
The website of the European commission : http://ec.europa.eu
The supranationality of the website is obvious everywhere. The pre-homepage offers the choice between the 23 official languages versions, as it is the duty of the of the EU to provide as much information possible in every of the official languages. Besides the formal aspect of law enforcement, it emphasises the feeling of community. It is also put forward in respond to the perpetual debate over the use of languages in the work of the institutions.
The design of the website is rather plain. This is a very rational and functional web-portal. Of course the colour blue is dominant, and the stars of the European flag are always on the top-banner. But that is basically all that catches our eyes. The values and symbols are conveyed much more through the content of the pages than through images, colours or design. The website is thought to give the reader the feeling that the whole EU machine is working and covering many topics.
The hypertextuality reinforces this feeling. The portal gathers a hodgepodge of links to European projects and awards or advertises their success. The homepage hosts link-banners to the other European institutions, the members of the commission and to special event. In February 2007 was for example a banner linked to the web-portal of the 50th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.
The main goal of this web-portal is to give to the individuals or organizations looking for it an instantaneous access to any information available about the European commission. The key-words are transparency, clearness and rapidity. It is clear that hypertextuality has increased the effectiveness of this goal and helped in its achievement.
The website of the Permanent Representation of France in Brussels : http://www.rpfrance.eu/index.html
We find rather similar characteristics in the webpage of the Permanent Representation of France in Brussels. The first goal is informative : what is the mission of the Representation, who is working there. It involves a simple design too. The colour blue and the yellow stars are still dominant but they are linked with red and white, as soon as in the pre-homepage where the French colours are overwhelming. The main actor is here the member-state.
The hypertextuality is rather focused on internal links, and especially on contents from French officials (statements of representatives i.e.). Yet the page exists only through the network. The mission of the representation is to connect the European institutions to the French ones and therefore the role of the website is to be completely integrated to this two geographically-separated worlds.
Consequently, the website is part of the European institutional network but is far from being transnational : its only language is French and the external links lead to pages in French language. In the end, the website reaches its goal and its integration to the network through hypertextuality is relevant.
Political network
For constitutional law, institutions define a public space where politics takes place. This happens in the cyberspace too. Besides, because there are European elections, there is a transnational political life.
Political life in the cyberspace is already a very important matter in the US, and it used to be less in Europe. But it is now booming for the last seven years. Therefore, there is a difference of dynamism between the political life in the cyberspace and in the real world.
The website of a transnational party : http://www.newropeans.eu
Newropeans defines itself as “the first trans-European political movement, which will run for European elections in 2009 in all EU Member States with the same name, the same programme and the same objective.”[3]. The party, which has more, so far, the shape of a political project, has a self-conscience of its transnational nature as the first characteristic to be stated : “All members of Newropeans can participate directly (via the Intranet of Newropeans) in our trans-European debates and decisions of Newropeans[4].”. Such an effort in working constantly on the transnational basis would have been impossible –and it is not said that it is working properly at the moment– without internet.
This small entity benefits from a very poor presence on TV, radio or newspaper and therefore puts efforts in networking through the web. Hypertextuality is oriented towards this goal. The homepage hosts external links to “local blogs”. Besides newropeans is also networking outside its own webpage by creating discussion groups in sites such as http://www.studivz.net, a German website for student networking.
Newropeans claims its independency from the European institutions, and advocates a different conception of policy making in the EU, as they “think that fresh ideas and necessary changes this time will not come from the national governments or Brussels.”[5]. Here, no sky-blue, no stars, nothing which can remind the visitor of the European content. The symbolic exists by negation of the traditional EU symbols. Even the own symbols of the party, a salamander and the map of Europe are not too highlighted. They would not be yet recognized and memorized.
In the end, he website is totally oriented towards its task of networking. It is a vital need for this partisan movement which will run for European elections in 2009. Yet, even though newropeans can not avoid internet and actually exists mainly through it, its network does not rely on strong roots as in established pan-european parties.
The website of the Party of European Socialists : http://www.pes.org
A French team of researchers from the RTGI[6] (Networks, Territories and Geography of Information) of the Technologic University of Compiègne (UTC) has noticed in a recent study [7] that the pan-european socialist party has established a very specific strategy of cyber-networking.
To understand web-cartography, there is one concept that has to be explicated : the notion of cyber-proximity. One says that the “closer” two websites are, the more hypertext links they have in common. That is to say, the possibility they offer to go from one website to the other one. From this definition, and with other tools increasing the accuracy of one study, it is possible to draw maps of website networks.
The starting point of the discovery of the RTGI team, is that the access to the information occurs through the search engines. Therefore, to appear as high as possible in the Google™ results, every single socialist European representative has his or her own webpage. By doing so, the hypertextuality becomes thicker and the shared links are numerous between the personal page of the MEP and its party’s webpage.
By repetition of links and keywords in the 218 personal pages (the number of PES deputies at the European Parliament), the Party of European Socialists is over-represented in the map of European websites drawn by the team of RTGI in November 2006[8].
Civil society network
As the map of the RTGI team shows, the European civil society is extremely present in the cyberspace. Associations, think-tanks, blogosphere and webzines (web-magazines) are overwhelming. This network is composed of a massive number of websites and its organization follows a chaotic pattern.
As Norbert Elias noticed in his famous definition of the law of monopole, many independent social actors can participate in a social process by their private initiative without being consciously aware of the existence of the social process itself[9]. This is the same principle that prevails in the network established by the European civil society in the cyberspace : the RTGI team noticed an organization of these networks based on horizontal relations, without any hierarchy. The link exchange (the agreement between two webmasters to refer to the other site in its own page) is the only result of mutual affinity.
The web-portal : http://www.touteleurope.fr[10]
The website ensures two main tasks. On one hand, it offers a daily updated information about the EU, its institutions, its organization and its policies. An on the other hand, it acts as the French-speaking portal for European debate by promoting on its own pages the cyber-locations where this debate takes place.
This latter activity calls to a very intense network-making. Since May 2006, touteleurope.fr quotes on its homepage the headlines of 25 websites from various origins (institutional, political, civil society, blogosphere, lobbying networks etc.).
As Matthieu Lerondeau, member of the staff of touteleurope.fr, underlines[11], the contents of this portal are published under the Creative Commons license[12] “which allows any citizen, whether they are blogger or not, to reproduce these contents for non commercial purposes”[13] and helps spreading the information.
In other words, the first task of such web-portals, whether they are francophone or from any of the 23 official languages of the EU, is to make the members of the network aware of their belongings. Then, the goal is to rend the European information more visible, easier to reach in the search engines, according to the process described previously. Both tasks are obviously paired.
The website of the Stockholm Network : http://www.stockholm-network.org
The Stockholm Network is a pan-European think tank and market-oriented network. It works as an exchange forum between its members helping them implementing researches and influencing the European policy-making. They focus on three main topics that cover the most burning questions in European societies : health and welfare, intellectual property and competition, and environment.
The main purpose is link exchange. As a difference with institutional and political web-portals, the present organization names itself “network”. Giving information is not the first goal of the website. Everything is network-oriented, and this is not by chance that the web-designers have paid attention to the development of a very clear interactive map which represents instinctively the location of the members of this network.
The liberal and market values, present in the lines of the website, are staged with photographs showing working people or urban locations. They are constantly put into European perspective in the text content as well as by representing flags of the member-states[14] or European maps[15].
Conclusion
Pro-European networks in the cyberspace are constantly growing. Yet the components of today’s Europe, the Europe of the real world, are note equally represented in the cyberspace. Some are more, or less, present and organised as they are in the real world. Some networks are absent of one of the two sides of the computer screen. It is therefore important not to take for real the state in which European networks (and this is also true for euro-sceptics groups ) are existing and developing in the cyberspace. Such a risky attitude can lead to deep misunderstanding of the real course of events in the European Union and the organizations revolving around.
What is very important to understand in these networks is that they don’t have the same state of self-conscience : all the networks don’t recognize themselves as networks. We are face to various degrees of self-conscience. Yet this conscience determines the way of functioning of the actors (political parties, institutions, personal bloggers etc.).
The last example we deal with, Stockholm Network.org, is highly interesting to the extent that it is when it comes to the oldest and most accomplished realm of the European Union policies, the common market, that we find the highest self-conscience and the best organization of the network. Whereas for community life networks, the conscience of belonging to a network and the advantages it can bring is only appearing recently.
In the end it can only reinforce the opinion that the better integrated and linked the social forces are, even and more and more in the cyberspace, the best information circulate, which is vital for a vivid democratic life.
[1] Vincent Thébault, Géopolitique de l’Europe, Paris, Nathan, 2006, p. 43 (coll. Nouveaux Continents)
[2] Ibidem, p. 43
[3] http://www.newropeans.eu/spip.php?rubrique=4〈=en , recorded the 19/01/07
[4] http://www.newropeans.eu/spip.php?article=29〈=en , recorded the 28/01/07
[5] http://www.newropeans.eu/spip.php?rubrique=4〈=en, recorded the 28/01/07
[6] http://www.rtgi.fr/, recorded the 18/01/07
[7] http://www.touteleurope.fr/fr/observatoire-europe/europe-en-idees/entretiens/guilhem-fouetillou.html , recorded the 18/01/07, audio and text report of an interview with G. Fouetillou, co-founder of RTGI
[8] http://www.touteleurope.fr/fileadmin/CIE/06-observatoire/toile/cartonov06/Touteleurope.fr_Carte_nov06.pdf , recorded the 23/01/07, map of European francophone web
[9] N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, Vol.II. State Formation and Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell, 1982
[10] Toute l’Europe means all Europe
[11] http://www.taurillon.org/Petite-histoire-de-la-blogosphere-europeenne-francophone , recorded the 27/02/07
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_License , recorded the 27/02/07
[13] Translated from the French by our cares from http://www.taurillon.org/Petite-histoire-de-la-blogosphere-europeenne-francophone , recorded the 27/02/07
[14] http://www.stockholm-network.org/publications.php , recorded the 27/02/07
[15] http://www.stockholm-network.org/network.php , recorded the 27/02/07
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire