Alla ricerca dell’euroscetticismo sui social media: un confronto tra 12 Stati membri in occasione delle elezioni europee 2014

Biblioteca della libertà

Co-author: Luigi Curini and Marco Mainenti 

Acknowledgments: Unicredit Bank and East on line for funding the project. Voices from the Blogs for providing data

What is worth remembering:

• We provided an index of Euroscepticism through sentiment analysis
• Online Euroscepticism is correlated with Trust in EU according to the Eurostat survey
• We find a divide between supporters and opponents of a German-centric EU

Abstract

The present paper adopts a modern technique of sentiment analysis to analyze the comments published on social media concerning four types of EU related policies: austerity, labour policies, fiscal union and banking union. In the process the paper compares judgments made by public opinion in 12 different EU Member States. This analysis allows us to build an index of online Euroscepticism and shows that criticism is markedly higher on the topic of austerity, whereas European public opinion seems more favourable to the banking union. Online Euroscepticism is lower in Germany and in new Members States, and such index is correlated with the trust in European Union measured through traditional survey data.