The FINANCIAL — In the analysis of more than 1.2 million tweets in English, French and German collected between May 1-14, a decidedly mixed view about the EU emerged, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the conversation on Twitter leading up to the European Parliament elections.
In English, 31% of the assertions on Twitter about the EU were positive toward the EU (which included the EU directly, its institutions and Europe), compared with 39% that were negative and 30% that were neutral.
The Twitter conversation in French broke down the same basic way—33% positive, 39% negative and 28% neutral. And while the German language conversation about the EU on Twitter was much more positive (39%) than negative (5%), these views were embedded in a low intensity conversation that represented a mere fraction of the Twitter activity in French and English, according to Pew Research Center.
The positive view toward the EU was reflected in a tweet from Finnish minister Alexander Stubb who wrote: “We need the EU for four simple reasons: peace, prosperity, security and stability. We can do more together, than alone.” The opposite view was voiced in a tweet from MetManPH noting that, “It’s not racist to believe that membership of the EU is not in Britain’s best interests.”
Other elements of the Twitter discussion in the run-up to the May 22-25 balloting for a 751-seat pan-European Parliament reinforce the notion that the 28-nation organization does not provoke particularly strong interest or approval in this corner of the social networking world.
The pan-European elections are organized and governed by each country’s national parties which put forward candidates for the European Parliament, according to Pew Research Center.
While a rather robust Twitter conversation emerged around the national parties in each of the three languages, the party for that country that generated the most attention was one with either a distinctly anti-EU platform or a party critical of the common currency, the Euro.
Additional analysis of the English-language discussion about each of the five candidates for the European Commission presidency demonstrated the degree to which the parties draw more attention than individual candidates. None of the candidates received more than 12,886 English-language tweets in the time studied. Even considering that some candidates may have gotten additional attention in their native languages, these numbers are quite small. (British Prime Minister David Cameron received 133,390 tweets alone during the same period.) The tone of Twitter sentiment toward each of those presidential candidates was overwhelmingly neutral—with between 65% and 79% of the tweets not being either markedly positive or markedly negative, according to Pew Research Center.
As a 2013 Pew Research Center report noted, Twitter opinion about major issues and events frequently differs from broad public opinion, since those using the social media site often comprise a small slice, rather than a representative sample, of the general public. A recent Pew Research Center survey providing representative opinion in seven EU nations found that citizens’ views of the EU in France and the U.K. are somewhat more favorable than what is reflected in the Twitter conversation.
In the U.K., 52% of the survey respondents had a favorable view compared to 41% unfavorable; in France it was 54% favorable, 46% unfavorable. The more favorable tone of the German response on Twitter, however, was generally in sync with overall German public opinion as measured in the Pew Research poll, which was considerably more favorable (66%) than unfavorable (31%) about the EU. On other measures, such as whether the EU listens to and understands the needs of Europeans, national public opinion seems more in tune with the general lack of enthusiasm on Twitter, according to Pew Research Center.
In examining the social media discussion related to those national parties in the U.K., France and Germany, one common element emerged. In each case, a national party with an explicitly anti-EU or anti-Euro platform generated the most attention.
In the U.K., that was the right-wing U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP, which favors the country leaving the EU. From May 1-14, Twitter users produced 607,447 tweets about UKIP, which is more than for the Tories, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats combined.
In France, the far-right National Front is a vocally anti-EU party. And while the volume of the Twitter conversation was smaller in French than in English, the National Front (almost 86,936 tweets) received more attention than any other national party. The center-right Union for a Popular Movement was next, at nearly 68,733.
Once again, the Twitter activity in German was considerably less than in English and French. But the same pattern held. The party that generated the most tweets (about 27,100) was the Alternative for Germany, which has campaigned against the common European currency, the Euro. The center-right Free Democratic Party was not far behind, with about 24,837, according to Pew Research Center.
Discussion about this post