Abstract
Contributions in this thematic issue focus explicitly on citizens and their online engagement with European politics. For social media research in the European Union, citizens remain an understudied actor type in comparison with political elites or news organizations. The reason, we argue, is four key challenges facing social media research in the European Union: legal, ethical, technical, and cultural. To introduce this thematic issue, we outline these four challenges and illustrate how they relate to each contribution. Given that these challenges are unlikely to dissipate, we stress the need for open dialogue about them. A key part of that involves contextualizing research findings within the constraints in which they are produced. Despite these challenges, the contributions showcase that a theoretical and empirical focus on citizens’ social media activity can illuminate key insights into vitally important topics for contemporary Europe. These include civic participation, institutional communication, media consumption, gender inequality, and populism.
Highlights
Within the European Union (EU), the widespread adop‐ tion of social media dovetailed with a series of chal‐ lenges that threatened to undermine the polity
We asked the academic community to carry out research projects that focus on citizens and their engagement with European politics on social media
The result is an inspiring collection of articles on issues such as populism, gender, online engagement, news con‐ sumption, and data accessibility. In opening this thematic issue, we present our reading of the state of social media research on the EU to situate the research on citizens along three dimensions: con‐ tent, context, and activity
Summary
Within the European Union (EU), the widespread adop‐ tion of social media dovetailed with a series of chal‐ lenges that threatened to undermine the polity. The result is an inspiring collection of articles on issues such as populism, gender, online engagement, news con‐ sumption, and data accessibility In opening this thematic issue, we present our reading of the state of social media research on the EU to situate the research on citizens along three dimensions: con‐ tent, context, and activity. These biases can be attributed to four challenges in conducting academic research on citi‐ zens’ engagement with European politics through social media: legal, ethical, technical, and cultural. We detail these challenges below, and illustrate how each contri‐ bution in this thematic issue grappled with them. Our aim with this thematic issue is to contribute both to our substantive knowledge on citizen engagement with European politics as well as our understanding of the cur‐ rent practice of academic research on the theme
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