The Politicisation of the EU and the Making of a European Twittersphere: The Case of the Spitzenkandidat Process

Focusing on the notion of politicisation, this chapter explores to what extent the lead candidates process for the European Commission’s Presidency (Spitzenkandidaten) rendered the emergence of a European Twittersphere plausible. The empirical analysis provided here, entails quantitative and qualitative elements on the Spitzenkandidaten process during the 2014 and 2019 European parliamentary elections. To what extent did the process become a trend on Twitter? On which issues did Twitter users focus during the campaign? To what extent did the lead candidates generate political contestation across member states? Which was the geographical distribution of Twitter users and tweets related to the process? Through which language did Twitter users mostly communicate? The findings further the discussion on the impact of social media on the democracy and the politicisation of the EU, as well asthe establishment of an online European public sphere.