Citizen Perceptions of The European Union: The Impact of the EU W ...

or skills; and, furthermore, less restricted by time and space, as can be seen in the continued spreading of the blogosphere worldwide (Herring, 2004; Matheson, 2004; Singer, 2005).¹⁴ A further move in this direction, which continues to blur the lines between users and communicators, is Web 2.0, with its continually developing functionality such as user-generated content, wikis, file-sharing, video blogs, or open-source software that comes to life only through the user's engagement. Thus, essentially all a user needs to become a communicator is a computer (or handheld device) with an Internet connection, software, and a certain amount of skill to produce a Web page or otherwise post content in an online forum or a blog. Of course, the question of whether he or she will actually employ this option is a different one.

Presenting the findings of the MUDIA project, a research project examining the state of online journalism and more specifically the roles assigned to users of online news Web sites in Denmark, France, Great Britain, and Ireland, Trench (2004) reported that even though online journalists anticipated more interaction with and feedback from their readers, generally, journalism did not seem to have changed much. According to Trench, the lines between user and producer did not seem to be disappearing, and it was generally found that levels of interactivity were rather low. Nevertheless, it needs to be pointed out that user-generated content has not only led to the continual growth of YouTube into the world's largest user-generated content video system (Cha, Kwak, Rodriguez, Ahn, & Moon, 2007), but has also contributed to breaking down the state's information monopoly. A prime example of this was the ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine in 2004.¹⁵

While the discussion may, at this point, raise questions of equal access and the digital divide (Eastin & LaRose, 2000; Norris, 2001), and while sceptics would argue that, so far, the Internet has mostly failed to live up to the deliberation it was said to bring about (Garnham, 2000), this would lead too far away from the focus of this study. The important thing is the possibility of the shift in roles. It could be argued that the impact of having this possibility is similar to the principles behind nuclear deterrence, albeit with less drastic consequences. While communicators from,