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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The EU Election on Twitter

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In this chapter the political implications of social media and their affordances for political discourse are examined. The focus is on candidates’ Twitter usage during the 2014 EU elections in France and in Germany. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of tweets collected during a period of four weeks have been carried out on the basis of the functional operator model of Twitter. The model serves as a framework for assessing users’ tweeting styles, which can range between personal-interactive and topical-informative. The comparison of French and German top candidates’ tweeting styles, which mainly appear to be „personal-interactive“, however questions the candidates’ alleged efforts to enter into dialogue with their voters.