The EU Parliament on Twitter—Assessing the Permanent Online Practices of Parliamentarians

Figures & data

FIGURE 1. Activity index medians per party group.

Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.

TABLE 1. Descriptive Statistics for the Independent Variables Employed

Variables	Descriptives	Data gathered from
Politician’s Demographics
Age	M = 55, Mdn = 56,SD = 11	http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en
Gender	65% male	http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en
Politician’s Twitter Use
N of followers	M = 3926, Mdn = 987,SD = 12,422	Twitter API
N of users followed	M = 458, Mdn = 193,SD = 734	Twitter API
Population’s General Internet Use
Frequent Internet Use (% of population)	M = 58, Mdn = 60,SD = 13	http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Social Media Use (% of population)	M = 40, Mdn = 37,SD = 10	http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Population’s Political Internet Use
Online Consulting	M = 8, Mdn = 7SD = 4	http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Interact w. Public Authorities	M = 42, Mdn = 35,SD = 14	http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Population’s Political Trust
Trust in EP (Scale of 0–10, 10 highest level of trust)	M = 4, Mdn = 4,SD = 1	http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

FIGURE 2. Activity Index Medians per country.

Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.

TABLE 2. Multiple Regression Analysis Predicting Twitter Activity Index

	Block I: Politician’s Demographics	Block II: Politician’s Twitter Use	Block III: Population’s General Internet Use	Block IV: Population’s Political Internet Use	Block V: Population’s Political Trust	Incremental R^2 (Adj. R^2)
Age	−.21***
Gender*	−.06					.06 (.05)
N of Followers		.05
N of Friends		.33***				.21 (.20)
Frequent Internet Use			−.22**
Social Media Use			.18**			.26 (.24)
Online Consulting				.17*
Interact w. Public Auth.				.16*		.27 (.25)
Trust in EP					−.09	.28 (.26)

Note: Standardized beta coefficients presented.

*** = p < .001, ** = p < .01, * = p < .05

* = Dichotomous variable: Female = 0, Male = 1