Eventing Europe: Broadcasting and the Mediated Performances of Europe

Abstract

Studying the role of broadcasting in the making of Europe can help to emphasize technology’s role as central actor in the story of Europe’s hidden integration, and — here’s the other side of the story — its fragmentation. This chapter aims to study the history of Europe by starting with the idea that broadcast communication was the most powerful and influential means for both national and transnational communication in the twentieth century. The central objective is to problematize Europe as a broadcasting space by describing and analysing European radio and television broadcasts originating from the International Broadcasting Union and the European Broadcasting Union and by questioning their specific contribution to the medial construction of European and international communication spaces in constantly changing political and cultural environments. In retracing both sound and audiovisual broadcast transmissions in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s we will link the development of different broadcast technologies (radio and television) to visions of European broadcasting spaces and their role in the continuous reinvention of Europe or re-imagination of European identities. Starting with an a priori geographical definition of Europe is futile given the need to embed the discursive construction of ‘Europe’ into changing material, legal and institutional maps. Here again, the very nature of broadcasting as a transnational or transborder phenomenon with its inevitable spillover effects challenges the classic ways of mapping Europe.