Social Media and Political Accountability AndreaCeron Social Media and Political Accountability Bridging the Gap between Citizens and Politicians AndreaCeron DepartmentofSocialandPoliticalSciences UniversityofMilan Milano,Italy ISBN978-3-319-52626-3 ISBN978-3-319-52627-0(eBook) DOI10.1007/978-3-319-52627-0 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017937942 ©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s)2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,whetherthewholeorpartofthematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsof translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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Coverillustration©mrPliskin/gettyimages Printedonacid-freepaper ThisPalgraveMacmillanimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland A CKNOWLEDGMENTS To what extent does the information available on social media make the understanding of everyday politics and parliamentary dynamics easier? This book provides a few answers to this specific question and related matters,showingthatthecommentsreleasedonsocialmediacanbeused to assess both policy positions and the actual behavior of political actors, with an eye to the impact of social media in terms of accountability, transparency and responsiveness. From this perspective, the book investi- gatesclassicalpoliticalsciencetopics,suchasgovernmentformation,intra- party dissent, party splits and trust in political institutions. As such, it is situatedatthecrossroadsofdifferentdisciplinesandprovidesinsightsona wide list of research fields: party organization, intra-party politics, legisla- tive politics, social media analysis, democratic theory and political communication. The list of people to thank is long aswell, because I started to work in this direction in the fall of 2012, and across these five years many collea- gues and friends helped me to reach this goal. To start with, I wish to thank VOICES from the Blogs (http://voices-int.com) for sharing data and for providing the infrastructure used to perform the iSA supervised sentimentanalysis,throughtheVOICESANALYTICSplatform.Ithere- fore thank my two VOICES pals, Luigi Curini and Stefano Iacus, for bringing me to the world of sentiment analysis on a snowy day of winter 2012. I also wish to thank several student assistants, particularly Alessandra Cremonesi, Alberto Fragapane, Fabio Catena, Giovanni De Stasio, Giovanni Iotti, as well as Agnese Barni, Andrea Ceretta, Fiorenza v vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ambrosetti and Giovanni Re, who assisted in data collection, data man- agement orin the differenthand-coding phases. I am also grateful to several other colleagues, including Beppe Porro, Mauro Barisione and Sergio Splendore, for illuminating conversations, stimulating cooperation and for providing cues from their specific fields of expertise. AspecialthankgoestomyfamilyandFedrafortheircontinuedsupport. Finally, I also want to thank all participants and discussants at confer- ences and workshops in which I presented some pieces of research extracted from this general project. Preliminary results were presented at the NYU La Pietra Dialogues on Social Media and Political Participation (Firenze, 10–11 May 2013), ECPR Research Sessions (Essex, 8–11 July 2014), Annual Convention of the Italian Political Science Association (Perugia, 11–13 September 2014), International Conference on Public Policy (Milan, 1–4 July 2015), Gothenburg Workshop on Intra-Party Politics (Gothenburg, 17–18 September 2015), and the International Symposium on Re/Constructing Politics through Social & Online Media (Stockholm,20–21June2016). Ihaveappreciatedallthefeedbackprovidedtherein,whichallowedme toimprovethecontentofthebook.ButIwanttothankespeciallyPablo Barberá, Kenneth Benoit, Alejandro Ecker, Zac Greene, Ann-Kristin Kölln, Michal Krzyzanowski, Helen Margetts, Asimina Michailidou, Jon Polk, Tamara Small, Hans-Jörg Trenz, Joshua Tucker, Cristian Vaccari, Augusto Valeriani andScott Wright. I hope that this book, in turn, will be useful to inspire or improve someone else’s research. I also hope that it will contribute to moving political science from studying problems to solving them, restructuring this disciplineandsettlingitonthegroundofthe“BigDatarevolution.”Inso doing, the book will certainly become a valuable tool for practitioners, policy analysts, spin-doctors and political advisors who work for political partiesorotherpoliticalinstitutions,andmaybeitscontentwillbeuseful ineverydaypolitics,helpingtotransformpoliticalinstitutionsandpossibly paving the wayto a“sentimentdemocracy.” C ONTENTS 1 SocialMedia,PoliticalInstitutionsandthePrincipal–Agent Dilemma 1 2 Research Design andMethods 25 3 Endorsements in Primary Elections 45 4 Ministerial Selection:Twitteras aSignal? 65 5 Parliamentary Behavior: RebelsandSwitchers 89 6 “CompetingPrincipals” 2.0?The Pressure ofSNS Users 105 7 Social Media, CollectiveActionandPublic Policy 133 8 Restoring OnlinePolitical Trust 157 9 Social TV andPolitical TalkShows: Empowering the Audience? 179 vii viii CONTENTS 10 Conclusion: A SentimentDemocracy? 197 References 211 Index 233 A BBREVIATIONS API ApplicationProgrammingInterface CAD Digitaladmininstrationcode CMP ComparativeManifestoProject DDoS DistributedDenialofService DL “TheDaisy” DS DemocratsoftheLeft FB Facebook FI ForzaItalia IBC ItaliaBeneComune IMU Housingtax IRPEF Personalincometax IVA Salestax LGBT Lesbian,gay,bisexualandtranssexual LN NorthernLeague M5S FiveStarMovement MPs MembersofParliament NCD NewCenterRight NGO Non-governmentalorganizations NLP Naturallanguageprocessing PCO Partyincentraloffice PD DemocraticParty PDL PeopleofFreedom PI PopularsforItaly PM Primeminister PPG Parliamentarypartygroup PR Proportionalrepresentation PSI ItalianSocialistParty RC CivilRevolution ix x ABBREVIATIONS RCV Roll-callvotes SA Sentimentanalysis SASA SupervisedAggregatedSentimentAnalysis SC CivicChoice SEL LeftEcologyandFreedom SNS Socialnetworkingsites SoN SioNo SP ServizioPubblico TIP TrustinPolitics UDC UnionofChristianandCentreDemocrats