The European Union’s common public sphere project dates back to the 1960s and relies on Europeanisation through the gradual eradication of communication boundaries between its member countries. However, it is evident by now that Europeanisation of national public spheres is hard to achieve by increasing overlaps between national public spheres, synchronisation of news reporting across national boundaries, or diffusion of Europeanist norms into national politics. The European Union’s common public sphere project may hence be in danger. This calls for explorations of other imaginable models of the public sphere for Europe. Are there traces of other modes of transnational public sphere emerging in Europe? In this article, we explore a models of the transnational public sphere which is based on an alternative concept of Europeanisation derived from the cleavage theory. By drawing on social media data and employing tools of social network analysis, we demonstrate the empirical possibility of a cleavage model of the European public sphere.

欧盟的共同公共领域项目可以追溯到 1960 年代，它依赖于通过逐步消除其成员国之间的沟通界限而实现的欧洲化。然而，现在很明显，国家公共领域的欧洲化很难通过增加国家公共领域之间的重叠、跨越国界的新闻报道同步或将欧洲主义规范传播到国家政治中来实现。因此，欧盟的共同公共领域项目可能处于危险之中。这需要探索其他可以想象的欧洲公共领域模式。欧洲是否出现了其他跨国公共领域模式的踪迹？在本文中，我们探索了一个跨国公共领域的模型，该模型基于从分裂理论衍生出的另一种欧洲化概念。通过利用社交媒体数据和使用社交网络分析工具，我们证明了欧洲公共领域分裂模型的经验可能性。