From Visitors to Publics: Audience-Making and Communicative Governance in the European Capital of Culture

This article examines the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) as a European Union (EU) cultural policy instrument through which European and international publics are constructed within its European dimension. Drawing on qualitative content analysis and discourse-sensitive interpretation of core documents from six recent ECoCs, supplemented by monitoring and evaluation materials, it develops a three-layer model of audience-making. First, public address concerns how publics are institutionally imagined and targeted. Second, narrative translation examines how local histories and cultural concerns are reformulated as Europeanly legible stories. Third, evidenced visibility analyzes how public reach is circulated and made accountable through media, digital platforms, and evaluation practices. The article argues that visibility is not merely promotional, but a form of communicative governance through which cities seek recognition within European symbolic space. It contributes to European Studies by showing how EU cultural governance produces publics while exposing tensions between visibility and participation, numerical reach and interpretation, and portable narratives and substantive European publicness.