The Joint Research Centre of the EU Commission: An Ideological Dispositif for Whom? A Critical and Positive Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This paper comprehensively examines the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) public communication and its practices when interacting with recruited external contributors, shedding light on its role as a Foucauldian dispositif in shaping political narratives and policy decisions. Drawing inspiration from the works of Gilbert and Wodak (2000), Rossetti di Valdalbero (2021), and building upon the insights of Hughes (2018), this study employs a blend of Critical and Positive Discourse Analysis, quantitative and qualitative multimodal corpus linguistics, and autoethnography (Chang 2008; Adams et al. 2015) to dissect the JRC's activities and their implications for decision-making processes within the EU. The paper particularly focuses on the political struggles among actors involved in decision-making processes and the impact on report authors.

Keywords: Joint Research Centre; dispositif; European Union; discourse analysis; multimodality; autoethnography; political communication