In the run-up to the European Parliament elections of May 2019, EuVisions is monitoring the online activity of the members of the EU Parliament.

Out of 750 MEPs, we were able to retrieve 666 active Twitter profiles (88.8% of total).

At the beginning of October, we started tracking the activity of MEPs by collecting the tweets they send as well as the reactions they receive, in terms of retweets and replies.

The MEPs we are monitoring come from all of the 28 EU countries (including the UK) and belong to all the nine EP groups:

• the European People’s Party (EPP),
• the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D),
• the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE),
• the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR),
• the Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA),
• the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL),
• the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group (EFDD),
• the Europe of Nations and Freedom Group (ENN) and
• the Non-attached Members.

Our goal is to detect:

• the main topics of discussions,
• the protagonists of the debate and
• MEPs’ capacity to engage citizens in their online discussions.

The results of the monitoring activity take the form of a series of weekly infographic articles which you will find below, after the methodology section.

If you would like to have more information about the project, please write to Martina Zaghi, at m.zaghi30@gmail.com.

Every week, we publish an infographic article composed of the same set of graphs, namely:

Who’s tweeting the most?

A graph named “Tweets” shows a daily breakdown of the overall number of tweets (v.a.) sent by all the members of each EP political group. By looking at the peaks occurring in the distribution, it is possible to detect relevant offline events that generated online bubbles of conversations among MEPs. 

Moreover, a graph named “Tweets/Number of MEPs” highlights how many tweets were sent, on average, by the MEPs of the EP groups, each day. This helps us to understand the activity rate of groups independently from their size.

Citizens’engagement

A bar chart shows for every EP political group, the number of tweets sent by the relative MEPs and the volume of retweets and replies these messages received by non-EP-Members (henceforth, “citizens”). This gives us an idea of which groups are best at generating engagement.

Top 20 hashtags (MEPs vs. Citizens)

Three wordclouds point at the protagonists of the weekly online debate. The first cloud shows the 20 MEPs who sent the highest number of tweets (“Most active”). The second one highlights the 20 MEPs whose messages received the greatest quantity of retweets (“Most retweeted”). Eventually, a third wordcloud displays the 20 MEPS whose tweets got the largest number of replies (“Most replied”).

Single MEPs activities

A treemap infographic provides insights into the topics of discussion among both, MEPs and citizens. The MEPs treemap displays the 20 hashtags used the most by the MEPs in their Twitter conversations, while the Citizens treemap shows the 20 hashtags used the most by the citizens in their reactions (retweets and replies) to MEPs’ messages.

Which countries’ MEPs tweet the most?

A map represents the geographical distribution according to a “tweets-to-MEPs” ratio. More precisely, the map shows the number of average tweets sent by MEP featuring to a given nationality. This last chart shows which countries’ MEPs were the most active over a given week and. The tool can potentially highlight the presence of nation-based debates.