The EU for Children: A Case of Web-mediated Knowledge Dissemination

The paper examines the communication of institutional information about the European Union focussing on how said information is organised and re-contextualised in order for it to be both comprehensible and precise and/or appealing to readers with little or no competence in the matter (given their stage of cognitive development and their limited background knowledge). In the light of the impact that knowledge re-contextualisation has on several aspects of communication, which range from lexico-syntactic patterns to different discourse strategies, the paper aims to disclose the discursive resources employed to disseminate the concept of the EU in two official websites, Kids’ Corner and Euro Kids’ Corner, both launched by the Commission in 2011 as part of their educational communication expressly addressed to children.