Post-digital Europe: society, politics and technology in the age of generative artificial intelligence. The Transformation of the European Public Sphere

This doctoral thesis investigates how European integration is being reshaped in the post-digital age, arguing that the European project must be understood as a communicative, symbolic and technologically mediated construction rather than solely an institutional or policy process. Drawing on a multidisciplinary theoretical framework integrating European studies, social representations theory, communication studies and critical approaches to technology, the work conceptualises the European Union as a political formation continuously produced through discourse, meaning-making practices and evolving media ecologies. Special attention is devoted to the rise of generative and agentic artificial intelligence, examined not as a mere extension of digital transformation but as a socio-technical rupture that alters the epistemic conditions of communication, legitimacy and public authority. The thesis develops three core analytical components. First, it reconstructs the historical trajectory of European integration from its post-war foundations to the enlargement of 2004 and the crisis-driven developments of the 2005–2025 period, emphasising how legitimacy has progressively shifted from an elite-driven permissive consensus to an era of politicisation, contestation and communicative fragility. Second, it analyses European public institutional communication as a meta-policy domain that remains structurally weak yet essential to the reproduction of the EU’s authority, mapping its evolution from analogue technocratic logics to the hybrid dynamics of Web 2.0, datafied governance and AI-mediated communication. Third, it offers a multilevel theoretical model of the European public sphere as a site where information, participation and communication intersect to shape the symbolic economy of integration. Empirically, the research employs a qualitative multi-method design combining expert interviews, participant observation and policy document analysis. Findings reveal persistent misalignments between institutional self-representations of communicative effectiveness and societal perceptions, highlighting the endurance of the EU communication deficit even in the 2024 European elections. The study identifies the emergence of a post-digital European public sphere characterised by algorithmic mediation, hybrid informational ecologies, new forms of artificial sociality and a utilitarian consensus that redefines public attitudes toward the EU. The thesis advances the central claim that communication is not an auxiliary tool of governance but a constitutive dimension of European integration. By foregrounding the implications of generative artificial intelligence for authorship, authenticity and legitimacy, it offers a novel framework for understanding how the meanings of Europe are constructed and contested under conditions of profound communicative and technological transformation.