Journées d’études « Réseaux et TIC ; réseaux et innovation »Labex SMS

1. The European election through the
lens of Twitter
Nikos Smyrnaios, LERASS
Journées d’études « Réseaux et TIC ; réseaux et innovation »
Labex SMS

2. Research questions
Coming from journalism and media studies
Interested in how the online public sphere functions
Can network analysis help understanding political
debate online ?
Which indicators better reveal significant political « relations »
established on Twitter?
What is the structure of online political debate in a multilingual
environment such as the European Union ?

3. Context
The European election of May 25 2014 was a political event of
great magnitude:
1. The economic and social crisis raised political stakes
especially in Southern Europe
2. First time that European parties had declared candidates
for the presidency of the EU Commission
3. First time that a candidate debate on TV was organized
and broadcast throughout Europe
4. Twitter was implemented massively by EU institutions as a
tool of citizen participation
5. Success of extreme right and radical left parties

4. Method
1. Collection of tweets including two different hashtags related
to two distinct events in May 2014. Data was collected with
DMI Twitter Analytics (digitalmethodsinitiative/dmi-tcat on
GitHub)
- #TellEurope: livetweeting of TV debate between the 5
candidates to the presidency of the Commission (30k tweets
by 20K different users on May 15-16)
- #EP2014: livetweeting election day and commenting results
(346k tweets by 138k different users on May 25-27)
2. Investigation on the political and electoral context

5. Method
3. Production of two network graphs with Gephi using the Open
Ord algorithm in order to distinguish clusters
- Dots = user accounts, lines = interactions between users
- Topology of the graph depends on interaction intensity
- Dot size depends on incoming mentions and RTs
- Color of dots depends on clustering
4. Manual classification of dots/user accounts according to
nature (media, activist etc.), political position & nationality =>
comparison of information from the graph with the political
context

6. #TellEurope #TellEurope

7. #TellEurope
- Political differences and affinities reflected in the
structure of the network
- Particularity of the cluster around Alexis Tsipras
- While 4 clusters (Schulz, Keller, Verhofstadt, Juncker)
are relatively close and connected strongly to each
other, Tsipras’ cluster interacts only with those of
Schulz and Keller
- Simultaneously it strongly associates with another
sizable cluster of Greek users
- Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, France & Spain)
more present than the rest
- Greece organized campaign on social media in favor
of Tsipras because of national stakes

8. #EP2014 #TellEurope

9. #EP2014
- Clusters mainly organized by country
- Some strong inter-cluster relations by political affinity
e.g. Alexis Tsipras & Jean-Luc Mélenchon
- Top countries again from Southern Europe (France,
Italy Spain) + GB, Germany, Nethelands & Belgium
- Transnational & national media play a central role in
the discussion
- Mix of national and European politics
- The most cited official accounts: Juncker, Renzi,
Mélenchon, Schulz, Le Pen, Grillo, Tsipras, Farage,
Hollande, Keller and Verhofstadt

10. Network analysis shows protagonists, affinities, specific cluster
dynamics that reflect realworld politics
Political debate on Twitter structured by political homophily but
what is more important is language
Communication actions such as RT and mentions are more
pertinent in such analysis than following/follower
Twitter and SNS begin to form a public arena for Europeans
who don’t have common media
Shortcomings: hashtag dependency (e.g. Ireland)
Representative of over-politicized segments and media but not
of the public opinion as a whole
Tool and data opacity
Just a point of departure for further qualitative research

11. Both case studies available on
http://ephemeron.eu
Merci !
@smykos