Twitter is an important public space in which political issues are discussed, and Twitter networks have been shown to provide an important vector for political communication between elites and the public. To date however, these networks have been considered from a static perspective with little attention being paid to how they evolve over time. This paper aims to address this gap in the literature by discovering and quantifying the relationships between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Twitter and showing how they evolve. In examining the evolution of MEPs' online connections, we explore how the use of the tool changes over time and reflects substantive political processes in the Parliament. We aim to demonstrate how the political affinities of MEPs are reflected in their online networks and how MEP experience in the Parliament impacts upon these networks.
