The Absence of Social Media Campaigning During EP Elections: Twitter as a Press Office

Social media communications deeply impact the dynamics of electoral campaigning. In the case of European elections, social media platforms shape new ways of mobilising electorates transnationally, but also facilitate the spread of Euroscepticism and disinformation about the EU. In this article, we wish to understand the online behaviour of main candidates and political parties on X (formerly Twitter) and their various strategic usages of social media communication tools. We distinguish between three overlapping uses of X: a) publicity: sharing content and information that is considered relevant for shaping the voter’s choices, b) user engagement: mobilising electorates, inviting for dialogue and participation and engaging the Twitter community in political debates, and c) polarisation: targeting the political opponent through the expression of extreme and polarised opinions and friend-adversary distinctions. Drawing on a large comparative data sets of campaigning posts on X by leading candidates and political parties that stand for European elections in the period of May-June 2025, we are able to show that Twitter debates touching upon electoral issues and engaging users rarely emerge. Instead, candidates and political parties use Twitter mainly to link to various media content or as an announcement platform for online and offline events that take place outside of X. There is, in other words, a general tendency across parties and candidates to marginalise X as a social media platform of campaigning, to avoid user engagement in public debates and to divert audience attention away from X to other media sites