Europe and Euroscepticism on Twitter During the 2019 European Parliament Elections

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyse the activity on Twitter of the eight main candidates who stood in the 2019 European election in Spain. The analysis was developed throughout the electoral campaign and established based on two methodological perspectives. First, the content analysis allowed to observe which topics each candidate spoke about and from which perspective (pro-European or Eurosceptic). Second, the discourse analysis allowed to further explore the political communication strategies developed. This analysis is based on two hypotheses. The first (H1) is that European issues and approaches will not be a priority in candidates' discourses for the European Parliament, given the context of political polarisation in Spain and the fact that these elections can be read as a second round for the April 2019 general election. The second (H2) is that Euroscepticism will have a marginal presence in candidates' messages. The results confirm H2 but reject H1.