ABSTRACT
The European Economic Community and the European Community have well documented ‘low periods’, in the 1960s and 1980s, during which the future direction of integration, if not the process itself, was in doubt. Hence efforts by European institutions including Parliament to publicise their aims and activities – to go around national governments’ agenda-setting – stand a better chance of access and effectiveness than hitherto. Amsterdam was a watershed for the Parliament and convinced many members that they must close the gap between popular perceptions of Parliamentary weakness and irrelevance and the facts of growing Parliamentary power and influence. For such members an educational campaign must be begun among European voters to correct this misperception. The rise of television to a dominant position within media led to studies of its interaction with other media and its intrinsic qualities as a medium of effective mass communication.
