Teaching

This is a teaching research seminar where students learn how to do qualitative empirical research. The goal of the seminar is to organise and analyse focus group discussions that will be carried out in the framework of a teaching research project, i.e. in cooperation with students. The focus group discussions will be used in two ways, a) as a way to debate Europe with the citizens and b) as a tool to gather knowledge about the gap between the European Union and its citizens. The focus group discussions will allow for developing a broad understanding on the European Union’s perception and the reasons of citizen support or citizen distrust in and of the EU. All in all, understanding the background reasons of average citizen´s opinions on the EU will allow for a more nuanced assessment of the alleged gap between the EU´s elites and its citizens, and the ways to remedy it. Research will use an exploratory approach in order to grasp the citizen´s feelings about the EU. On the basis of a synthesis of the state of the art of attitude research into EU support and democratic legitimacy (i.e. Eurobarometer data and current research findings) and methods literature on focus groups, a set of questions will be developed. They will structure the focus group discussions. The aims are to discuss with the participating citizens, a) their personal reasons for being critical or supportive of the EU, b) how they see the future perspectives of politics and democracy in the EU and in general and c ) what makes more and more people not only vote for right wing populists or extremists but also be critical of democratic institutions. The focus group discussions will be recorded and then the records will be transcribed and analysed in the seminar in cooperation with the students.