Patterns of democracy? Social network analysis of parliamentary Twitter networks in 12 countries

Abstract

Social media networks have revolutionized social science research. Yet, a lack of comparative empirical analysis of these networks leave social scientists with little knowledge on the role that contextual factors play in the formation of social relations. In this paper we perform a large-scale comparison of parliamentary Twitter networks in 12 countries to improve our understanding of the influence of the country’s democratic system on network behavior and elite polarization. One year of Twitter data was collected from all members of the parliament and government in these countries, which resulted in around two million tweets by almost 6000 politicians. Social network analysis of the Twitter interactions indicates that consensual democracies are characterized by more dense parliamentary relations but also higher hierarchy and fragmentation compared to majoritarian systems. Secondly, parliaments with a high effective number of parties are more cooperative, which results in higher inter-party relations. Next to that, we show differences in the followers, mentions, and retweets networks that hold across all countries and political systems. Our empirical results correspond to established theoretical insights and highlight the relevance of institutional context as well as the platform characteristics when conducting social media research. With this research we demonstrate the importance and the opportunities of social network analysis for comparative research.