Using Social Media Data to Analyse Issue Engagement During the 2017 German Federal Election

A fundamental tenet of democracy is that political parties present policy alternatives, such that the public can participate in the decision-making process. Parties, however, strategically control public discussion by emphasising topics that they believe will highlight their strengths in voters’ minds. Political strategy has been studied for decades, mostly by manually annotating and analysing party statements, press coverage, or TV ads. Here we build on recent work in the areas of computational social science and eDemocracy, which studied these concepts computationally with social media. We operationalize issue engagement and related political science theories to measure and quantify politicians’ communication behavior using more than 366k Tweets posted by over 1,000 prominent German politicians in the 2017 election year. To this end, we first identify issues in posted Tweets by utilising a hashtag-based approach well known in the literature. This method allows several prominent issues featuring in the political debate on Twitter that year to be identified. We show that different political parties engage to a larger or lesser extent with these issues. The findings reveal differing social media strategies by parties located at different sides of the political left-right scale, in terms of which issues they engage with, how confrontational they are and how their strategies evolve in the lead-up to the election. Whereas previous work has analysed the general public’s use of Twitter or politicians’ communication in terms of cross-party polarisation, this is the first study of political science theories, relating to issue engagement, using politicians’ social media data.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist is widely considered to be one of the most influential political writings in the early United States. Consisting of eighty-five essays in total, the first seventy-seven essays were originally published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788, and the final eight appeared in the first collected edition of The Federalist in 1788, although they were later republished in New York newspapers as well. The Federalist was written collectively by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote the ratification of the newly drafted Constitution. In keeping with the conventions of 18th-century public political debate, The Federalist was published under the pseudonym “Publius” to present its arguments to the public in anonymous terms, focusing attention on the content of the essays rather than the personal views or personalities of the authors. Although Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would not be formally identified as the authors of The Federalist until the publication of a notice in The Port-Folio on 14 November 1807, their collective authorship was widely known by the 1790s, and their reputations as respected statesmen and innovative political thinkers brought considerable attention and credibility to their arguments. Through the voice of Publius, The Federalist explains and defends the core principles and structure of the new government outlined within the Constitution, while also identifying the flaws and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. In doing so, The Federalist provides substantive critical and philosophical discussions of federal governance and its relationship to the principles of plural sovereignty, national unity, republican representation, citizenship, national security, commercial interests, and the separation of powers, all of which had a profound influence, not just on the ratification debates, but also on subsequent interpretations of constitutional language and authority, from the founding period to the present. While scholars have endlessly debated the political, historical, philosophical, literary, and cultural impact of The Federalist, these essays continue to serve as foundational texts for studying the politics and culture of the early United States, as well as contemporary interpretations and revisions of constitutional principles in legal, legislative, and cultural spheres.

When attack meets debate. Presence of conflict in the framing of the 2018 and 2021 Mexican federal elections

During election campaigns the mass media favor political debate, giving relevant issues a particular framing. In this coverage the use of the conflict frame stands out, and although it usually presents politics as an exercise of confrontation and attack, it can also show it as a process of discussion and the exchange of opinions. A content analysis was conducted on television and press news during the 2018 presidential and the 2021 federal legislative elections in Mexico. The findings confirm the existence of two differentiated frames, that of “conflict” and that of “discussion and political agreement”. Furthermore, a connection between the two frames was detected in the media coverage of the campaigns.

Innovative Pulses for Western European Temperate Regions: A Review

In Europe, there is an increasing interest in pulses both for their beneficial effects in cropping systems and for human health. However, despite these advantages, the acreage dedicated to pulses has been declining and their diversity has reduced, particularly in European temperate regions, due to several social and economic factors. This decline has stimulated a political debate in the EU on the development of plant proteins. By contrast, in Southern countries, a large panel of minor pulses is still cropped in regional patterns of production and consumption. The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential for cultivation of minor pulses in European temperate regions as a complement to common pulses. Our assumption is that some of these crops could adapt to different pedoclimatic conditions, given their physiological adaptation capacity, and that these pulses might be of interest for the development of innovative local food chains in an EU policy context targeting protein autonomy. The research is based on a systematic review of 269 papers retrieved in the Scopus database (1974–2019), which allowed us to identify 41 pulses as candidate species with protein content higher than 20% that are already consumed as food. For each species, the main agronomic (e.g., temperature or water requirements) and nutritional characteristics (e.g., proteins or antinutritional contents) were identified in their growing regions. Following their agronomic characteristics, the candidate crops were confronted with variability in the annual growing conditions for spring crops in Western European temperate areas to determine the earliest potential sowing and latest harvest dates. Subsequently, the potential sum of temperatures was calculated with the Agri4cast database to establish the potential climatic suitability. For the first time, 21 minor pulses were selected to be grown in these temperate areas and appear worthy of investigation in terms of yield potential, nutritional characteristics or best management practices.

Nello specchio del Rinascimento

Today, historians, philosophers, and scholars of cultural heritage discuss about the relationship between the periodizing labels of historiography and their symbolic employment within the current political rhetoric. To understand the relevance of this issue in Italy, it can be helpful to look at the academic and public debates around the category of “Renaissance”. On the one hand, this article aims to map some notable political uses of this historical figure as a symbol; on the other hand, it reconstructs a tradition of thought focused on the epistemic autonomy of the same category. With these intentions, I look at a group of Italian critics of Johan Huizinga’s aesthetic view of history – like Delio Cantimori, Eugenio Garin, and their heirs within the academic milieu of the “Scuola Normale” of Pisa. Finally, I evaluate whether there is any correspondence between “Renaissance” as a symbol within the political debate and its historiographical employment as a periodizing label.

Discourse and Disinformation on COVID-19 Vaccination in Spain and Brazil

This chapter addresses the creation of political conflict on Twitter in a comparative study between Brazil and Spain. Based on an analysis of the political debate on dealing with two countries' health crises, it analyses the most retweeted messages published during the first week of vaccination in Europe and the Americas. Firstly, it analysed the general characteristics of the online debate on the immunisation of COVID-19. Secondly, it carried out an analysis of information disorder in each country. Although governmental positions in both countries are opposed, the results allow establishing common patterns of polarized profiles in both countries that question the management of the pandemic. It can be seen how political polarization is shaped as a characteristic of disinformation in both countries. That reveals that, after the health crisis, there is a crisis of democratic institutions that impact public health actions, but specifically to combat COVID-19.

The Debate on the Pandemic in Spain

The chapter analyses the discourse of the political debate in the Spanish parliamentary confrontation on the coronavirus and its health and economic consequences. To this end, it analyses eight debates led by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the opposition, Pablo Casado. The discursive strategies of both influence the central aspects of the political framework on which the legislature is structured, as can be seen in the grammatical mechanisms, in the lexical selection, in the evidentiality around the sources of legitimacy, and in general, in the stylistic and emotional component of the respective interventions. In this way, the pandemic has become a privileged reference for the political programmes of the different parties.

Strategi Kampanye Joko Widodo dan Ma'ruf Amin dalam Debat Calon Presiden pada Tahun 2019

This article aims to describe the political campaign strategy of Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin in the presidential candidate debate in the 2019 presidential election. The problem is focused on the campaign strategy carried out by the PDI-P party to support the political debate agenda against the presidential candidates Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin. In order to approach this problem, Nursal's theoretical reference is used to use the theory of political campaign strategy. The selection of this theory in this study is because it is more suitable to describe the findings of political campaign strategies for the candidate pairs Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin in the 2019 presidential candidate debate that can attract sympathy or gain support as described in the preliminary study. The data were collected through interviews and analyzed qualitatively. This study concludes that in the implementation of the presidential candidate debate in the 2019 presidential election, the political campaign strategy applied by PDI Perjungan to support Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin, one of which is the marketing of political products through the mass media. First, strengthen the material. Second, observing the target and determining the target for the political debate. Third, approach the media throughout the media, including media that are affiliated and unaffiliated.

Populism in Moldova’s Informal Political System

The 2020 presidential and 2021 parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova saw a clear victory of the populist Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) of the newly elected president Maia Sandu over the pro-Russian coalition led by former presidents Igor Dodon and Vladimir Voronin. These results testify the citizens’ will to change a country with an ever-widening gap between politicians and populace. Since 2015, the political debate is centred on corruption, but the cases described draw the picture of a political landscape where practices go beyond the traditional understanding of the term. In fact, their analysis demonstrates the existence of a system of Soviet political culture which relies on informal practices of the elite, arguing that some of these practices have clear Soviet roots while others are an adaptation of the Soviet mentality to the new liberal democratic setting. The paper also highlights differences between the populist parties born either as a reaction to the system or as an adaptation of the elite response to perceived expectations of the electorate. This research took place between 2020 and 2021 utilising participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Moldovan political experts. The paper concludes that future research on Moldovan politics should incorporate analysis of this informal dimension to state politics which is core to public debate on corruption and the integrity of state institutions in Moldova.

Innovative Pulses for European Temperate Regions: A Review

In the Global North, there is an increasing interest in pulses both for their beneficial effects in cropping systems and for human health. However, despite these advantages, the acreage dedi-cated to pulses has been declining and their diversity reduced, particularly in European temperate regions, due to several social and economic factors. This decline has stimulated a political debate in the EU on the development of plant proteins. By contrast, in the Global South, a large panel of minor pulses is still cropped in regional patterns of production and consumption. The aim of this paper is to investigate the for cultivation of potential minor pulses in European temperate regions as a complement to common pulses. Our assumption is that some of these crops could adapt to different pedo-climatic conditions, given their physiological adaptation capacity, and that these pulses might be of interest for the development of innovative local food chains in an EU policy context targeting protein autonomy. The research is based on a systematic review of 269 papers retrieved in the Scopus database (1974–2019), which allowed us to identify 41 pulses as candidate species with a protein content higher than 20% that are already consumed as food. For each spe-cies, the main agronomic (e.g. temperature or water requirements) and nutritional characteristics (e.g. proteins or antinutritional contents) were identified in their growing regions. Following their agronomic characteristics, the candidate crops were confronted with variability in the annual growing conditions for spring crops in European temperate areas to determine the earliest poten-tial sowing and latest harvest dates. Subsequently, the potential sum of temperatures was calcu-lated with the Agri4cast database to establish the potential climatic suitability. For the first time, 21 minor pulses were selected to be grown in these temperate areas and appear worthy of inves-tigation in terms of yield potential, nutritional characteristics or best management practices.