Sebastian Adrian Popa

Does personalization increase turnout? Spitzenkandidaten in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament elections were the first elections where the major political groups each nominated a lead candidate (Spitzenkandidat) for the Commission presidency in the hope that this would increase the visibility of the elections and mobilize more citizens to turn out. Using data from the 2014 European Elections Study, an EU-wide post-election survey, we analyse whether and how the presence of the lead candidates influenced the individual probability to participate in these elections. Our findings show that the recognition of the candidates increased the propensity to turn out, even when controlling for a host of other individual-level factors explaining turnout and the context factors known to facilitate participation. Furthermore, the campaign efforts of the lead candidates are associated with higher turnout levels and are reinforced by candidate recognition.

A Bad Workman Blames His Tweets? The Consequences of Citizens’ Uncivil Twitter Use When Interacting with Party Candidates

The recent emergence of microblogs has had a significant effect on the contemporary political landscape. The platform’s potential to enhance information availability and make interactive discussions between politicians and citizens feasible is especially important. Existing studies focusing on politicians’ adoption of Twitter have found that far from exploiting the platform’s two-way communication potential, they use it as a method of broadcasting, thus wasting a valuable opportunity to interact with citizens. We argue that citizens’ impolite and/or uncivil behaviour is one potential explanation for such decisions. Social media conversations are rife with trolling and harassment practices and politicians are often a prime target for such behaviour, a phenomenon altering the incentive structures of engaging in dialogue on social media. To demonstrate this claim, we use all Spanish, Greek, German and UK candidates’ tweets sent during the run-up to the recent EU election, along with the responses they elicited, and rely on automated text analysis and machine learning methods to measure their level of civility. Our contribution is an actor oriented theory of the political dialogue that incorporates the specificity of the social media platform, further clarifying how and why democratic promises of such social media platforms are fulfilled or limited.

Theorizing Sex Differences in Political Knowledge: Insights from a Twin Study

It is well established that women and men differ in their psychological orientation to politics (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001; Dolan 2011; Fox and Lawless 2004; Thomas 2012). In addition to willingness to run for office, expressing interest in politics, and political efficacy, men and women tend to differ in reporting their factual knowledge of politics, but how do we explain the gap? This question is not merely important from a measurement standpoint (e.g., Mondak and Anderson 2004) but also has implications for our understanding of gendered political attitudes and behaviors. The gap can be reduced when controlling for a number of factors, but there remains a residual when measuring knowledge with the scale most widely used. This paper aims at providing insight on how we think not only about measuring something like “political knowledge” but also how we theorize gendered political behavior. We present a behavioral genetic analysis of sex differences in political knowledge using a genetically informative twin design to parse out the source of variation in knowledge. We do so predicated on a framework for thinking about gendered patterns in political behavior as well as findings from the existing literature on gender differences in the psychological orientation to politics. We believe our findings give us insight on what is wrong with current and seemingly gender-neutral measures of political knowledge.

National but European? Visual manifestations of Europe in national parties’ Euromanifestos since 1979

The architects of the European project made a significant effort to create a set of symbols for the community (such as the EU flag, the map of Europe, the anthem, etc.), and recent evidence suggests that the main European values are nowadays spontaneously associated with them. We know little, however, about if and when national political actors choose to display these symbolic visual manifestations of Europe. In this study, we examine the presence of such symbols in parties’ Euromanifestos since the first European elections. The presence of EU community symbols is correlated with several factors, suggesting that the display is consistent both with a policy-driven and with a vote-seeking logic. We explore at length the implications of these results for future visual analysis of parties’ European messages and for the larger issue of European identity.

From seeing the writing on the wall, to getting together for a bowl : direct and compensating effects of Facebook use on offline associational membership

ABSTRACT Research concerned with a decline of associational involvement has examined whether the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may reinvigorate or crowd out involvement in civil society. Yet, previous studies have not systematically investigated possible effects of Facebook use on associational membership. We posit that the effects of Facebook use are twofold: Facebook stimulates associational membership directly through its inherent networking features and indirectly by compensating for the lack of traditional mobilizing factors, such as social trust and internal efficacy. Relying on a probabilistic sample of German participants aged 18–49, our findings show that Facebook users are more likely to be members of voluntary associations and that Facebook use increases the likelihood of associational membership even for individuals with low levels of social trust and internal efficacy. Instead of crowding out offline associational involvement, Facebook use stimulates membership in voluntary associations, thus contributing to the vitality of civil society.

Showing their true colors? How EU flag display affects perceptions of party elites’ European attachment

Evidence suggests that incidental national flag exposure activates nationalistic feelings and that incidental exposure to the EU flag can affect citizen attachments to Europe. However, we know little about what inferences citizens make based on the EU flag when they see it displayed by parties in an electoral context. To test the expectation that this display affects citizens’ evaluations of party elites’ EU attachment, we conducted a large-scale experiment embedded in a Swedish survey in which respondents were exposed to communications from one of the two main Swedish parties, containing or not containing the image of the flag. We find that simple visual display does little to move perceptions. However, if citizens perceive that a particular party displayed the flag, then they are more likely to evaluate its party elites as more attached to Europe.

This time it was different

Abstract The Lisbon Treaty (2009) introduced key institutional changes to increase the relevance of elections to the European Parliament (EP). Among others, major political groups nominated different lead candidates, the so-called Spitzenkandidaten, for the 2014 EP elections. The aim of this article is to investigate how national political parties react to this new institutional setting. Using data from the 2014 Euromanifesto study, the article examines if and under what conditions political parties put emphasis on the Spitzenkandidaten system in their party manifestos and whether they take positive or negative stances when talking about it. The findings reveal that parties put little emphasis on the issue. Moreover, the factors promoting the Spitzenkandidaten system suggest that parties decide strategically upon emphasising that topic or take a positive stance on it if they expect to benefit from this.