Members of the European Parliament on Social Media: Why Do They Use Facebook and Twitter?
| Author | Michael Haman,Milan Školník,Jan Čopík |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221082444 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Early Results |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221082444
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(2) 412 –421
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299221082444
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Members of the European
Parliament on Social Media:
Why Do They Use Facebook
and Twitter?
Michael Haman1, Milan Školník1
and Jan Čopík2
Abstract
In this article, we analyze the use of social media by the members of the European Parliament.
More specially, we examined whether members of the European Parliament use Facebook and
Twitter for different purposes. To reach our goal, we contacted all 705 members of the European
Parliament by email. The vast majority of members of the European Parliament who decided
to participate in our survey replied that they use Facebook and Twitter for different purposes.
One of the main differences most often mentioned was that Twitter is used for an international
audience, and Facebook, for a national audience. Therefore, we decided to examine Facebook and
Twitter posts on the accounts of all members of the European Parliament to see what languages
predominate in their communication. We analyzed 253,660 Facebook posts and 485,862 tweets.
We found that members of the European Parliament use their national languages almost exclusively
on Facebook. On Twitter, the use of English significantly varies from country to country, and in
some countries, members of the European Parliament only rarely use their national languages, as
they aim for an international audience.
Keywords
Facebook, European Parliament, social media, survey, Twitter
Accepted: 4 February 2022
Introduction
Social media are not just used for personal communication and networking. On the con-
trary, in recent years, social media have become increasingly important for political
communication (Casero-Ripollés, 2018). Social media provide opportunities for politi-
cians to directly address and communicate with voters and setting a public agenda
1Department of Political Science, University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic
2Department of Humanities, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Corresponding author:
Michael Haman, Department of Political Science, University of Hradec Králové, Rokitanského 62, Hradec
Králové 500 03, Czech Republic.
Email: michael.haman@uhk.cz
1082444PSW0010.1177/14789299221082444Political Studies ReviewHaman et al.
research-article2022
Early Results
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