2.2 The Elitist
Other research has distinguished segmented transnational public spheres which have been conceptualized
as issue-specific communicative spaces, largely dominated by political and economic elites (Eder 2000). In
this vein, communication is perceived at the national level, but will concentrate on specific topics and in
specific segments, typically ‘elite quality newspapers’. However, elitist national newspapers and a handful of
commercial news outlets with a global outreach and a significant European audience, such as the Financial
Times, at the end of the day have a limited, elite readership that makes it hard to speak of a public sphere
(de Vreese 2002
, 2003; Koopmans 2007).
