A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter
Given the politicization of European integration, effective public communication by the European Union (EU) has gained importance. Especially for rather detached supranational executives, social media platforms offer unique opportunities to communicate to and engage with European citizens. Yet, do s...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cogitatio
2022-02-01
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| Series: | Politics and Governance |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/4686 |
| _version_ | 1828445513244999680 |
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| author | Sina Özdemir Christian Rauh |
| author_facet | Sina Özdemir Christian Rauh |
| author_sort | Sina Özdemir |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Given the politicization of European integration, effective public communication by the European Union (EU) has gained importance. Especially for rather detached supranational executives, social media platforms offer unique opportunities to communicate to and engage with European citizens. Yet, do supranational actors exploit this potential? This article provides a bird’s eye view by quantitatively describing almost one million tweets from 113 supranational EU accounts in the 2009–2021 period, focusing especially on the comprehensibility and publicity of supranational messages. We benchmark these characteristics against large samples of tweets from national executives, other regional organizations, and random Twitter users. We show that the volume of supranational Twitter has been increasing, that it relies strongly on the multimedia features of the platform, and outperforms communication from and engagement with other political executives on many dimensions. However, we also find a highly technocratic language in supranational messages, skewed user engagement metrics, and high levels of variation across institutional and individual actors and their messages. We discuss these findings in light of the legitimacy and public accountability challenges that supranational EU actors face and derive recommendations for future research on supranational social media messages. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-10T21:58:10Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-28d02dadec0d46eea92dd43e9229b206 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2183-2463 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-10T21:58:10Z |
| publishDate | 2022-02-01 |
| publisher | Cogitatio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Politics and Governance |
| spelling | doaj.art-28d02dadec0d46eea92dd43e9229b2062022-12-22T01:31:58ZengCogitatioPolitics and Governance2183-24632022-02-0110113314510.17645/pag.v10i1.46862407A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on TwitterSina Özdemir0Christian Rauh1Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NorwayResearch Unit Global Governance, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, GermanyGiven the politicization of European integration, effective public communication by the European Union (EU) has gained importance. Especially for rather detached supranational executives, social media platforms offer unique opportunities to communicate to and engage with European citizens. Yet, do supranational actors exploit this potential? This article provides a bird’s eye view by quantitatively describing almost one million tweets from 113 supranational EU accounts in the 2009–2021 period, focusing especially on the comprehensibility and publicity of supranational messages. We benchmark these characteristics against large samples of tweets from national executives, other regional organizations, and random Twitter users. We show that the volume of supranational Twitter has been increasing, that it relies strongly on the multimedia features of the platform, and outperforms communication from and engagement with other political executives on many dimensions. However, we also find a highly technocratic language in supranational messages, skewed user engagement metrics, and high levels of variation across institutional and individual actors and their messages. We discuss these findings in light of the legitimacy and public accountability challenges that supranational EU actors face and derive recommendations for future research on supranational social media messages.https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/4686european unionpolitical communicationpoliticizationsocial mediatext analysis |
| spellingShingle | Sina Özdemir Christian Rauh A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter Politics and Governance european union political communication politicization social media text analysis |
| title | A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter |
| title_full | A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter |
| title_fullStr | A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter |
| title_short | A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter |
| title_sort | bird s eye view supranational eu actors on twitter |
| topic | european union political communication politicization social media text analysis |
| url | https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/4686 |
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