COMMUNICATION DEFICIT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB AND UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA

Sa？etak This paper examines informing habits of youth, that is regular students of University of Zagreb and University of Ljubljana, on issues of the European Union. Namely, it examines how they inform themselves on the EU issues as well as how informed do they consider themselves to be. Furthermore, this research examines attitudes of youth towards reporting EU issues in the media as well as ways of communication between EU and its citizens. Used data was gathered through an online questionnaire. In total, 202 students participated in this research (100 students from University of Zagreb and 102 students from University of Ljubljana). Data analysis shows that students mostly feel ill-informed on the EU issues. They mostly use online sources of information when informing on mentioned issues, that is social networks and official websites of the EU institutions. Most of the respondents do not have an opinion on how are the EU issues reported in the media and how well does the EU communicate with its citizens. On the other hand, almost half of the respondents feel that better communication between EU and its citizens would reduce the appearance of EU’s democratic deficit