Conference Program

Communicating Europe in the Post-Digital Era: Youth Participation, Europeanization and Civic Agency

Promoting active citizen participation—particularly among young people—represents a critical challenge for contemporary democracies confronted with declining institutional trust, deep mediatization of the public sphere and the individualizing dynamics of platform-based communication (Sorice, 2020). The European Union constitutes a privileged arena for examining these transformations: a paradigmatic yet contested case of Europeanization of the public sphere, marked by persistent communicative and democratic deficits across local, national and supranational levels (Belluati, forthcoming; Lovari & Belluati, 2023; Trenz, 2005). These deficits are closely linked to the EU's enduring perception as a technocratic and distant polity, whose governance and communication practices often struggle to foster affective resonance and meaningful civic involvement (Belluati, 2021).
Within this framework, youth engagement emerges as a key corrective to structural limitations. Young people have been consistently framed as a strategic priority of EU policies and communication initiatives—not only as beneficiaries, but as agents capable of re-politicizing European integration and counteracting technocratic closure. Civil society organizations and non-formal educational practices also play a pivotal role in fostering active citizenship at the European level, while the EU's multilevel governance architecture provides a distinctive context for examining participatory democracy mechanisms operating across scales (D'Ambrosi & Parito, 2022).
Against this backdrop, this study investigates how digital technologies reshape citizen–institution interaction and civic participation within the Europeanized EU public sphere, with a specific focus on youth engagement in an emerging post-digital communicative environment characterized by algorithmic mediation and the growing institutional use of generative artificial intelligence (Pane et al., 2025).
The research adopts a multi-phase qualitative design combining three rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted between 2024 and 2026. A first wave (n = 25), conducted ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections, examines how EU institutional communication is perceived and negotiated in a high-stakes electoral context marked by platformization, polarization and misinformation. A second wave (n = 26) explores how EU institutions and civil society actors experiment with digital tools—from e-participation platforms to generative AI and chatbot interfaces—alongside youth-led appropriations of these technologies in non-formal educational settings. A third wave (n = 26), conducted in the post-electoral period, further probes the routinization of AI-assisted communication within EU institutional workflows and its implications for inclusion, responsiveness and democratic legitimacy (Pane, 2025).
Taken together, the findings offer a longitudinal and multi-perspectival analysis of youth participation in the EU's post-digital public sphere , highlighting persistent tensions between top-down institutional communication logics and bottom-up civic engagement, while identifying spaces of convergence where digital platforms and AI-enabled tools can support media literacy and participatory capacity-building. By situating youth engagement at the intersection of EU public communication, civil society action and multilevel governance, the article contributes to debates on Europeanization, democratic resilience and the future of participatory democracy in Europe (Pane, forthcoming).
The research draws on work carried out by the Jean Monnet Chair Com4T.EU – Communicating for Transitions in Europe at the University of Turin (2023–2026) and the Interactif project (Interregional action for France and Italy 2025-2026).