Mass Sentiment towards the EU during the Pandemic:
A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Media Data
PS7-2
Presented by: Chendi Wang
Mass sentiment towards the European Union has long preoccupied scholars of public opinion but is mostly constrained by survey data which preclude a rigorous statistical examination on the impact of sudden changes in the external environment on citizens’ EU attitudes. The emergency politics that characterised the European response to the Covid-19 pandemic offers an ideal opportunity to fill in this lacuna with social media data. First, do key decisions during the first wave of the COVID pandemic increase pro-EU sentiment? Second, do different types of decisions impact mass sentiment
towards the EU differently? Third, are the shifts in mass sentiment sensitive to prior politicisation of the policy in question? Finally, do these shifts vary by context, such as the underlying problem pressure in the healthcare systems? We propose a research design that draws together two original databases (Twitter+PPA) in the context of the pandemic. We find that: key decisions by the EU indeed increase pro-EU sentiment, and decisions in the public health domain have a larger impact than decisions in the economic domain. Also, the boosting effect of decisions only occurs when the level of prior politicisation of the policy is low. Last, problem pressure in the healthcare systems does not play a role in conditioning the impact of decisions on the sentiment towards the EU.
towards the EU differently? Third, are the shifts in mass sentiment sensitive to prior politicisation of the policy in question? Finally, do these shifts vary by context, such as the underlying problem pressure in the healthcare systems? We propose a research design that draws together two original databases (Twitter+PPA) in the context of the pandemic. We find that: key decisions by the EU indeed increase pro-EU sentiment, and decisions in the public health domain have a larger impact than decisions in the economic domain. Also, the boosting effect of decisions only occurs when the level of prior politicisation of the policy is low. Last, problem pressure in the healthcare systems does not play a role in conditioning the impact of decisions on the sentiment towards the EU.