Table Of ContentSocial Media and Political
Accountability
AndreaCeron
Social Media
and Political
Accountability
Bridging the Gap between Citizens and Politicians
AndreaCeron
DepartmentofSocialandPoliticalSciences
UniversityofMilan
Milano,Italy
ISBN978-3-319-52626-3 ISBN978-3-319-52627-0(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-52627-0
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017937942
©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s)2017
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher,whetherthewholeorpartofthematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsof
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology
nowknownorhereafterdeveloped.
Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthis
publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesare
exemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformation
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publishernortheauthorsortheeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespectto
thematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.The
publisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitu-
tionalaffiliations.
Coverillustration©mrPliskin/gettyimages
Printedonacid-freepaper
ThisPalgraveMacmillanimprintispublishedbySpringerNature
TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAG
Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
To what extent does the information available on social media make the
understanding of everyday politics and parliamentary dynamics easier?
This book provides a few answers to this specific question and related
matters,showingthatthecommentsreleasedonsocialmediacanbeused
to assess both policy positions and the actual behavior of political actors,
with an eye to the impact of social media in terms of accountability,
transparency and responsiveness. From this perspective, the book investi-
gatesclassicalpoliticalsciencetopics,suchasgovernmentformation,intra-
party dissent, party splits and trust in political institutions. As such, it is
situatedatthecrossroadsofdifferentdisciplinesandprovidesinsightsona
wide list of research fields: party organization, intra-party politics, legisla-
tive politics, social media analysis, democratic theory and political
communication.
The list of people to thank is long aswell, because I started to work in
this direction in the fall of 2012, and across these five years many collea-
gues and friends helped me to reach this goal. To start with, I wish to
thank VOICES from the Blogs (http://voices-int.com) for sharing data
and for providing the infrastructure used to perform the iSA supervised
sentimentanalysis,throughtheVOICESANALYTICSplatform.Ithere-
fore thank my two VOICES pals, Luigi Curini and Stefano Iacus, for
bringing me to the world of sentiment analysis on a snowy day of winter
2012. I also wish to thank several student assistants, particularly
Alessandra Cremonesi, Alberto Fragapane, Fabio Catena, Giovanni De
Stasio, Giovanni Iotti, as well as Agnese Barni, Andrea Ceretta, Fiorenza
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ambrosetti and Giovanni Re, who assisted in data collection, data man-
agement orin the differenthand-coding phases.
I am also grateful to several other colleagues, including Beppe Porro,
Mauro Barisione and Sergio Splendore, for illuminating conversations,
stimulating cooperation and for providing cues from their specific fields
of expertise.
AspecialthankgoestomyfamilyandFedrafortheircontinuedsupport.
Finally, I also want to thank all participants and discussants at confer-
ences and workshops in which I presented some pieces of research
extracted from this general project. Preliminary results were presented at
the NYU La Pietra Dialogues on Social Media and Political Participation
(Firenze, 10–11 May 2013), ECPR Research Sessions (Essex, 8–11 July
2014), Annual Convention of the Italian Political Science Association
(Perugia, 11–13 September 2014), International Conference on Public
Policy (Milan, 1–4 July 2015), Gothenburg Workshop on Intra-Party
Politics (Gothenburg, 17–18 September 2015), and the International
Symposium on Re/Constructing Politics through Social & Online
Media (Stockholm,20–21June2016).
Ihaveappreciatedallthefeedbackprovidedtherein,whichallowedme
toimprovethecontentofthebook.ButIwanttothankespeciallyPablo
Barberá, Kenneth Benoit, Alejandro Ecker, Zac Greene, Ann-Kristin
Kölln, Michal Krzyzanowski, Helen Margetts, Asimina Michailidou, Jon
Polk, Tamara Small, Hans-Jörg Trenz, Joshua Tucker, Cristian Vaccari,
Augusto Valeriani andScott Wright.
I hope that this book, in turn, will be useful to inspire or improve
someone else’s research. I also hope that it will contribute to moving
political science from studying problems to solving them, restructuring this
disciplineandsettlingitonthegroundofthe“BigDatarevolution.”Inso
doing, the book will certainly become a valuable tool for practitioners,
policy analysts, spin-doctors and political advisors who work for political
partiesorotherpoliticalinstitutions,andmaybeitscontentwillbeuseful
ineverydaypolitics,helpingtotransformpoliticalinstitutionsandpossibly
paving the wayto a“sentimentdemocracy.”
C
ONTENTS
1 SocialMedia,PoliticalInstitutionsandthePrincipal–Agent
Dilemma 1
2 Research Design andMethods 25
3 Endorsements in Primary Elections 45
4 Ministerial Selection:Twitteras aSignal? 65
5 Parliamentary Behavior: RebelsandSwitchers 89
6 “CompetingPrincipals” 2.0?The Pressure ofSNS Users 105
7 Social Media, CollectiveActionandPublic Policy 133
8 Restoring OnlinePolitical Trust 157
9 Social TV andPolitical TalkShows: Empowering
the Audience? 179
vii
viii CONTENTS
10 Conclusion: A SentimentDemocracy? 197
References 211
Index 233
A
BBREVIATIONS
API ApplicationProgrammingInterface
CAD Digitaladmininstrationcode
CMP ComparativeManifestoProject
DDoS DistributedDenialofService
DL “TheDaisy”
DS DemocratsoftheLeft
FB Facebook
FI ForzaItalia
IBC ItaliaBeneComune
IMU Housingtax
IRPEF Personalincometax
IVA Salestax
LGBT Lesbian,gay,bisexualandtranssexual
LN NorthernLeague
M5S FiveStarMovement
MPs MembersofParliament
NCD NewCenterRight
NGO Non-governmentalorganizations
NLP Naturallanguageprocessing
PCO Partyincentraloffice
PD DemocraticParty
PDL PeopleofFreedom
PI PopularsforItaly
PM Primeminister
PPG Parliamentarypartygroup
PR Proportionalrepresentation
PSI ItalianSocialistParty
RC CivilRevolution
ix
x ABBREVIATIONS
RCV Roll-callvotes
SA Sentimentanalysis
SASA SupervisedAggregatedSentimentAnalysis
SC CivicChoice
SEL LeftEcologyandFreedom
SNS Socialnetworkingsites
SoN SioNo
SP ServizioPubblico
TIP TrustinPolitics
UDC UnionofChristianandCentreDemocrats
