Members of the European Parliament on Social Media: Why Do They Use Facebook and Twitter?

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.