SOCIAL NETWORKS

90% of Members of the Spanish Parliament use Twitter compared
to 70% in some regionalparliaments.

Ciudadanos and Podemos have higher levels of visibility
and centrality on Twitter than other parties
(weighted by number of tweets).

Gender stereotypes are reproduced on social media.
Female MPs pay significantly more attention
to social and rights issues than male MPs.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Street politics is reflected to a large extent in online social networks, and at the same time it is transformed by the transformation of communication dynamics. Citizens use social networks to follow issues of interest outside electoral politics and to support political initiatives that they seek to get on the agenda. In this way, it is possible to study activists, social movement organisations, and the events that bring movements to life, through their digital traces. Q-Dem tracks social movement organisations and protest events on the social network Twitter in order to study changes in the dynamics of collective action, citizen attitudes towards political conflict and emotions in politics.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Q-Dem aims to explain how and why politicians and rulers prioritise issues on social media and the implications for political representation. The transformative potential of social networks for Western democracies is widely acknowledged, but considerable debate remains over whether their effects are relatively benign or pernicious for democracy. Drawing on agenda theory, political representation and social network studies, Q-Dem comprehensively analyses the issue attention patterns and communication strategies of parliamentarians on social networks in Italy, France, Spain and other countries in Latin America and Asia. The aim is to explain under what conditions social networks are a political arena in which political elites focus their attention on political issues or private content; whether they contribute to promoting lack of civility, focusing on negative campaigning, and showing unwillingness to engage in political debate. We also analyse the conditions under which political representatives prioritise issues that correspond to the preferences of their constituents and whether there are differences in the issues to which MPs pay attention.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networks have become a political arena in which MPs must prioritise issues. In this respect, Q-Dem seeks to understand to what extent there is congruence between the issues addressed on social media and the issues that these representatives bring to parliaments, also analysing the possible effect of individual variables. This type of study can provide some answers about the effects of social media on representative systems and help to understand the extent to which there is a gap between the parliamentary agenda and the agenda on social media.