Author of Research:  Luka Jesenšek

Year of Research:  2019

Key words: Twitter, European Parliament elections, social networks, elections, internet, European Union;

As part of his doctoral thesis, the author wanted to examine the structure of the Slovenian political debate on Twitter before the European Parliament elections in 2019, with the help of the social network analysis, focusing on 1) the phenomena of echo chambers; 2) content diffusion patterns and 3) the role of central users and politicians. Datafile contains 40670 units, that is Tweet IDs posted by 2,854 Twitter users between April 28th, 2019, and May 28th, 2019. Datafile is accessible in excel format. Instructions for extracting actual Tweets based on accessible IDs are also available as accompanying material. Social media became an important platform for political communication and dissemination of news, however some key questions regarding the nature of increasingly globalized and personalized communication networks remain unanswered. Modern networked public sphere consists of multitude of dispersed publics that are being shaped, interconnected and dissolved according to shared interests of its members. Optimistic expectations about social media enabling global democratization and a revival of critical public deliberation have been replaced by warnings that citizens online tend to cluster into polarized communities of similar views.

Cite the data:

Jesenšek, L. (2023). Slovenian Twitter debate ahead of 2019 European Parliament elections [Data file]. Ljubljana: Univerza v Ljubljani = University of Ljubljana, Arhiv družboslovnih podatkov = Slovenian Social Science Data Archives. ADP - IDNo: TWITEP19. https://doi.org/10.17898/ADP_TWITEP19_V1

Based on the research data, several publications were created, for example:

JESENŠEK, Luka, 2023, Polarizacija in širjenje vsebin na spletnih družbenih omrežjih pred slovenskimi volitvami v Evropski parlament 2019 : doktorska disertacija [na spletu]. Doktorska disertacija. Ljubljana : Univerza v Ljubljani. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12556/RUL-147414

Jesenšek, L., Verčič, D., & Kronegger, L. (2021). Struktura slovenske politične razprave na Twitterju ob volitvah v Evropski parlament. Teorija in praksa, 58(1), 49-71,. https://www.fdv.uni-lj.si/docs/default-source/tip/struktura-slovenske-politi%C4%8Dne-razprave-na-twitterju-ob-volitvah-v-evropski-parlament.pdf?sfvrsn=0