This thesis was awarded the Student Prize 2014 for best thesis of the Bachelor

European Studies at Maastricht University. Awarded by the Stichting

Wetenschapsbeoefening UM on January 16th

, 2015.

‘Liking’ the European Union

Deliberative Democracy on The European Parliament’s Facebook Page?

By Frank Mütze

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Content

1. Introduction p. 3

2. Literature Review p. 5

3. Case Selection and Sample p. 7

4. Research Question One p. 8

4.1 Theoretical Framework p. 8

4.2 Method p. 10

4.3 Results p. 12

5. Research Question Two p. 15

5.1 Theoretical Framework p. 15

5.2 Method p. 16

5.3 Results p. 19

6. Conclusion p. 25

7. References p. 26

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1. Introduction

On the 12th of March 2014, the Internet celebrated its twenty fifth birthday. In those twenty five

years, it has changed the way in which we communicate and live in this world; from mail taking

days or even weeks to deliver to the electronic mail that is delivered within mere seconds. Two

years after the Internet was created, the World Wide Web was launched and started its first era,

also called Web 1.0. This era is characterized by webmasters who create content, while the users

consume it (Wu & Ackland, 2013, p. 2). In the 2000s, Web 2.0 changed the way we use the

internet and it is characterised by social networking services (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter

and YouTube. Instead of only consuming the content, non-technical users are now also able to

easily create and distribute content (p. 2), using a social networking service. Not only has it

impacted our daily life, it has also made an impact on the political world, especially in the latter

half of the 2000s, with the leaking of government secrets by Wikileaks and the Arab Spring

(Loader & Mercea, 2011, p. 759, 762).

Ten years older than the Internet is another subject that is still very prominent today, at

least in the European Union’s political world: the democratic deficit. While it started in the

1970s as a debate around the direct election of the Members of the European Parliament, it now

focuses on the European institutions’ accountability and legitimacy (Vesnic-Alujevic &

Nacarino, 2012, p. 63-64). Even though the European Parliament (EP) is now directly elected

and had thereby overcome its democratic deficit according to other scholars (p. 65), Vesnic-

Alujevic & Nacarino argue that the EP still suffers from a democratic deficit in the form of

citizens’ disinterest and lack of participation in European politics (p.65-66). One of the solutions

proposed by Vesnic-Alujevic & Nacarino towards resolving the democratic deficit is through

deliberative democracy; in specific through deliberative democracy on the Internet (p.68).

Deliberative democracy can be defined as the inclusion of the citizens in the decision

making process of the government; in which the citizens come to a consensus after a process of

reasoned deliberation (Nabatchi, 2010, p. 9; Vesnic-Alujevic & Nacarino, p. 68). Characteristics

of deliberative democracy are the requirements that it must must be public and accessible;

reasoned opinions should be given; a procedure towards a decision; and openness for further

dialogue (Nabatchi, p. 9). In contrast to representative democracy, deliberative democracy does

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not put the rationality of the market or individual in first place, but instead encourages decisions

based on the rationality of the group (p. 10-11).

As for where deliberative democracy should take place on the Internet, social media has

been cited as a venue by Vesnic-Alujevic & Nacarino; especially after the Anti-Counterfeiting

and Trade Agreement had been averted through pressure from social media (p. 68). This paper

sets out to find out whether the European Union’s social media pages are already used as online

venues where deliberative democracy takes place, and as case study the European Parliament’s

Facebook page is chosen. However, due to the limitations of this paper it is not possible to

present a study that is representative for all the European Union’s social media pages, or even

one venue such as Facebook alone. Instead, the aim of this paper to present a first indication of

whether Facebook is a venue where deliberative democracy takes place, and thereby this paper

provides a framework that future research can use to study the topic.

The main research question this paper addresses is: to what extent are the European

Parliament and the citizens using Facebook as an online venue for deliberative

democracy? Deliberative democracy requires two elements to be present: the possibility to

participate in the decision making process and proper deliberation. By including both the EP and

the citizens, this research question allows us to find out if both elements and thus deliberative

democracy is present on the the EP’s Facebook page. This paper however claims that at the

moment the EP’s Facebook page is not a venue where deliberative democracy takes place.

Therefore two research questions are addressed in this paper. In order to have a

deliberative democracy, the EP needs to create a venue where citizens can participate in the

decision making process and this is the focus of the first research question: to what extent does

the European Parliament provide the opportunity to participate in the decision making process?

This will be determined by a qualitative analysis of the content of the EP’s posts using Carman’s

theoretical framework of parliamentary public engagement.

Deliberative democracy also requires proper deliberation among its citizens, and

therefore the second research question focuses on the citizens: what is the quality of the

deliberation among citizens? This will be determined by a qualitative analysis of the comments

on the EP’s Facebook page using Stromer-Galley’s concept of deliberation as theoretical

framework.

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This paper will be structured as followed: in the first part an overview of current literature

will be given. In the second part the case selection is explained in more detail. The third part

deals with the first research question, while the fourth part deals with the second research

question. In the end, a conclusion will be presented.

2. Literature Review

As Rishel already noted, the combination of social media and deliberative democracy has

received little attention (2011, p. 412). Although Rishel discusses this subject and expresses

concerns over the ability of social media to alter the deliberation process, her approach is

normative and focuses on the US, while this paper’s approach is empirical and focusses on

Europe. Instead, an overview of the current literature dealing with the use of social media in

combination with the political participation is provided, since this is more relevant towards the

research question. It does not only give an overview of what is already discussed in the literature,

it will also explain some characteristics of the use of social media in relationship to politics.

As mentioned earlier, Web 2.0 was preceded by Web 1.0. At first it was hoped that the

egalitarian and open characteristics of Web 1.0 could enhance the political debate. However, it

soon proved to be false hope, since Web 1.0 was transformed to the likings of the already

established political actors, instead of Web 1.0 transforming the representative democracy. With

Web 2.0, new technologies have become available and the hope to enhance the political debate

was revived (Loader & Mercea, 2001, p. 757-758). This hope has already materialized: Bode

(2012) has shown that the use of Facebook can have a positive effect on the political

participation (p. 365) and Christenssen and Bengtsson (2011) have shown that the Internet

increases political participation, especially among citizens that are already interested in politics

(Vesnic-Alujevic, 2012, p. 469). However, there is also criticism on using social media, since it

has the capacity to undermine deliberation and promote populist rhetoric (Loader& Mercea, p.

761).

Kim (2011) examined whether SNSs provided more exposure to politically different

opinions. This was in response to Sunstein (2007), who feared that because a person can easily

filter the content he or she sees on the Internet, there would be a decrease of exposure to different

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opinions; one of the conditions of deliberation (p. 6-7). Kim however found out that this was not

the case, and that in fact the use of SNSs such as Facebook increased the exposure to different

opinions (p. 974-975); a characteristic valuable for proper deliberation.

Relatively new is the concept of ‘the networked young citizen’, presented by Loader,

Vromen and Xenos (2014), and this concept proposes an answer towards the recent literature that

has shown that the younger generation turn away from representative democracy and turn

towards other ways of participating, centered around online social networks (p. 143). The turn

away from representative democracy is a reaction towards the present political class and system

that fail to undertake actions towards problems or issues deemed important by the youth, and by

using social media the youth expresses its opinions (p. 145). As Loader et al mention, “the

engagement of each new generation of young people with the practices and institutions of

democratic governance in a society is an essential means by which such political system retains

its legitimacy” (p. 148). In this respect, using Facebook as a venue for deliberative democracy

might help to retain the legitimacy of the European Union in the eyes of the young citizens.

Turning towards literature that deal with how Facebook is used, Thorson (2014) points

out that the use of Facebook for political posts by young citizens is not as straightforward due to

the social groundlessness: “SNS increase the uncertainties and risks associated with political talk

by increasing the ambiguity of the social setting, both in terms of potential audience and the

context within which a political message will be received” (p. 204). In other words: in fear of

who might read their opinion in an unknown and uncontrollable context, Facebook users might

refrain from political statements and apply self-censorship. On the other hand however, there are

users who use Facebook as a tool to inform their friends on their political interests (p. 207).

The European Parliamentary Research Service itself has also published a paper on the

practical implications of social media, especially in regard to parliamentary elections (Davies,

2014). Among the characteristics described in the paper are the ability of social media messages

to bypass traditional media filters; the ability to influence the traditional mass media; and the

multiplier effect, which is the rapid transmission of a message through multiple social media

networks, and most commonly known in its most extreme variant: ‘going viral’ (p. 3-6).

Although the current literature does contain articles that focuses on social media use by

political actors in individual countries, such as Germany (Elter, 2013), Sweden (Gustafsson,

2012), and to some extent Great Britain (Jackson & Lilleker, 2010), it lacks articles that analyse

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the content on the social media pages - and in particularly Facebook pages - of the European

Union’s institutes. This paper’s significance is therefore to present a first indication in an

academic area that lacks literature, and to present a framework that can be used by future

research.

3. Case Selection and Sample

While the European Parliament is active on several SNSs, its activity on Facebook was chosen as

a case study for several reasons. First of all, the EP itself describes its Facebook page as the

flagship of its presence on social media (European Parliament, n.d.). Second, the amount of

people following the EP on Facebook is much higher than on other SNS. While the EP has

approximately 47.000 followers on Twitter and 8.926 members on its LinkedIn page, these

numbers are very little compared to nearly 1.5 million Facebook likes (on June 20, 2014).

Although these ‘likes’ do not necessarily mean that all 1.5 million users are in favour of the

European Parliament, liking the page results in getting the EP’s posts displayed on your personal

timeline and therefore a ‘like’ is comparable to the followers of Twitter.

Third, Facebook is the least divided of all SNS. Although it has a separate Facebook

account for the UK and Ireland, it is relatively centralised compared to Twitter, which has an

account for each language. This means that occasionally some posts made on the Facebook page

were posted in a different language than English. These posts have been translated into English

before the analysis. The same procedure was followed for the comments that have been posted in

languages other than English, Dutch or German. Thereby the sample takes into account all

messages and avoids the selection of a particular language, which could lead to a fallacious

result. Last, the Facebook page generates much more response from citizens than the other SNS.

The posts made by the European Parliament during March 2014 will be taken as the

sample for this paper. Although I acknowledge that the timeframe is rather limited, increasing

the timeframe would create a sample too great to analyse given the limitations for this paper. The

choice for one month was due to the fact that a random sample over a longer time period might

result in a overrepresentation of only one type of post made by the EP. Using an one-month

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timeframe would avoid such overrepresentation and would thereby be more representative of the

communication of the EP.

4. Research Question One: To what extent does the European Parliament provide the

opportunity to participate in the decision making process?

4.1Theoretical Framework

This part of the paper deals with the first research question. It will first provide an overview of

the theoretical framework used, followed by an overview of the method used, after which the

results will be presented. The theoretical framework used for the first research question is

Carman’s parliamentary public engagement. Carman presented the framework in his article

Parliamentary public engagement: a comparative analysis, and based his article on Arnstein’s A

Ladder of Citizen Participation (1969). Although Carman gives a short overview of Arnstein’s

ladder, he continues to make references to non-explained parts of the ladder. This occurs to the

extent that for the purpose of this paper, it is more practical to first give an overview of

Arnstein’s ladder, followed by an overview of the adaptations made by Carman.

Although written in the late 1960s with in mind the discrimination of minorities in the

United States’ political system, Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation is still useful and

applicable to present day politics, because it effectively distinguishes the different degrees of

participation. The ladder is not meant as an all-inclusive description of these different degrees of

participation in real world politics, but instead a simplification to help illustrate “that there are

significant gradations of citizen participation” (Arnstein, 1969, p.217).

Arnstein’s ladder contains eight rungs, and the higher a person is positioned on the

ladder, the more power that person holds. The eight rungs can further be grouped into three

broader categories: the bottom two rungs as nonparticipation, the middle three rungs as degrees

of tokenism, and the upper three rungs as degrees of citizen power. Central is the power

relationship between the citizen and the (government) official, and the characteristics of the

rungs are based on the power (or powerlessness) that is present within the respective rung

(p.218).

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As indicated, the bottom two rungs are nonparticipatory. The first rung is manipulation,

in which citizens have the illusion they participate, but are in fact engineered by officials to

support their objectives. Arnstein gives the example of advisory boards in which citizens take

place, but which are used by officials to educate and persuade the citizens to support certain

projects, instead of hearing the citizens’ opinions on it (p.218). The second rung is therapy, in

which citizens are placed in any kind of therapy in order to adjust to society’s norms and values

(p. 218-219).

The middle three rungs are degrees of tokenism. Although usually connected to the

inclusion of minority groups, tokenism can be seen as acts solely undertaken to avoid criticism,

or said differently: “the policy or practice of making only a symbolic effort” (Merriam-Webster,

n.d.). The three rungs belonging to this category are thus characterised by their appearance of

participation, but are in reality not much more than a gesture.

The third rung is informing and is characterised by the stream of information from the

officials to the citizens. While it does inform the citizens for example of their rights, it is an one

way stream in which there is no room for feedback (p. 219). The fourth rung is consultation.

While the opinion of citizens is requested, this request can only constitute participation when that

request is also taken into account. This rung however assumes that the request is only a formality

or a symbolic effort, and nothing more than a request to participate in participation (p. 219-220).

The fifth rung is placation. Although a person in this rung theoretically has some influence, this

influence is usually limited in practice. Arnstein gives the example of a board of education, in

which a couple of citizens from poor backgrounds were placed. However, these citizens could

easily be outvoted and therefore have no real influence (p. 220-221).

Power and influence are characteristics of the upper three rungs; the rungs with degrees

of citizen participation. In the sixth rung, partnership, negotiations determine the power

distribution between the citizens and power holders (p. 221). Decisions are made based on

equality and cannot be changed unilaterally. The seventh rung, delegated power, is the first rung

in which the citizens have the upper hand in the decision making process. Lastly, the eighth rung,

citizen control, is the rung in which citizens have absolute control over the decision making

process.

Arnstein’s ladder thus focuses on the power relation, and some of its mechanisms, such

as citizen control, can conflict with the principles of representative democracy (Hepburn, 2014,

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p. 83). Carman’s model has taken Arnstein’s idea of progression of citizen power, but made it

compatible with both representative democracy and the internet. Carman’s model consists of

only four categories. The first is information transmission and provision, and is similar to

Arnstein’s rung of informing. Carman stresses the importance of information for the citizens,

since even though it is an one way stream, the information received is a crucial instrument for

citizens to hold their government accountable (2009, p. 37). Carman also notes that the

transmission of information usually does not increase the participation among non-participants,

but only deepen the connection with the already engaged participants (p. 40).

The second category is information exchange, and is positioned slightly higher on

Arnstein’s ladder. In this category, the stream of information is not one-way, but flows in both

directions. And although citizens and interest groups can now provide input in the decision

making process (p. 40), this form of participation is still rather limited, because even though the

power holders may hear the opinions of the citizens, the citizens lack the power to make sure that

the power holders act according to it (p. 43). Venting by citizens, although in itself an act of

exchanging information, cannot be seen as participation since it is not a meaningful response (p.

43).

The third category is public participation, and it should be placed somewhere between

Arnstein’s rungs of placation and partnership. While in this category the citizens are actively

involved and have genuine influence in the decision making process, the ultimate the power to

decide still lies with political institute (p. 43-44). The last category is public control; a category

in which the citizens have the ultimate decision power. An online referendum is an example of a

mechanism that can belong to this category (p.46).

4.2 Method

The content of the posts made by the European Parliament in March 2014 are analysed using a

coding method derived from Leston-Bandeira & Bender. In their paper How deeply are

parliaments engaging on social media?, Leston-Bandeira & Bender (2013) look at and compare

how different parliaments in Europe, including the EP, use the social media networks Facebook

and Twitter. After an exploratory study, they conclude that there are only low levels of

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engagement, and that the parliaments whose legitimacy is most frequently questioned - among

which is the EP - are the most active on social media (Leston-Bandeira & Bender, 2013, p. 294).

Because Facebook accounts for only ~15% of their sample (Twitter accounting for the other

~85%), their research can only be taken as an indication for the posts on Facebook. Leston-

Bandeira & Bender also only analysed the engagement from the supply side, being the

Parliaments, and thereby left out the reactions from the citizens - something this paper will take

into account with the second research question.

The coding method of Leston-Bandeira & Bender (2013) has been chosen because it on

the one hand takes into account Carman’s levels of participation, while on the other hand it takes

into account the characteristics of social media, such as the “online bubble” posts. It classifies

the posts into five categories: reporting of parliamentary activity, online bubble engagement,

engagement with parliamentary work, offline public engagement activity and unclassifiable.

Although the rest of this paragraph lists the criteria for each category, examples for each of the

categories will be given in the results section. The first category contains posts that report on the

parliamentary activities, for example a post that mentions a vote takes place that day. The second

category is the online bubble engagement, and contains posts that are geared towards the

promotion of the EP and is not related to any parliamentary work that took place at the time. The

third category, the offline public engagement activity, contains posts that promote offline

engagement, such as offline events or offline media coverage. The fourth category is engagement

of on-going parliamentary work. The main difference compared with the first and second

category, is that these posts contain requests for actual participation and that the responses

therefore can be seen as actual exchange of information, for example a request to respond to a

poll, petition or enquiry, whereas the second category’s responses do not escape the online

bubble. The last category contains posts that cannot be classified according to the previous

categories. This category also includes posts mentioning that the cover or profile picture has

been changed.

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4.3 Results

Before the result of the analysis is given, a general remark must be made regarding the posts of

the EP. While analysing the posts, it became clear that a substantial amount of these posts have a

dual agenda: on the one hand it served as a way of communicating the information of the EP; on

the other hand these posts tended to also include a request for information from the followers.

This later was usually done by including a question in which the EP asks followers to post their

opinion in a comment. An example of this is the EP’s post on the twelfth of March which serves

as providing information regarding a debate about the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Crimea),

however at the end of the post a question on how citizens think the situation should be solved

was included (European Parliament, March 12, 2014).

In other occasions the EP posted a question immediately followed by an answer - in the

same post, and usually the answer consisted of the actions the EP had taken towards the subject

of the question. For example on the twenty seventh of March, in which the EP first asks the

question Get the picture? followed by a statement and a link to a page containing more

information on the 2014 elections (European Parliament, March 27, 2014). Although these

questions are more rhetorical, they did generate some answers.

Posts containing either of those questions have not been counted towards the online

bubble engagement, since the main aim of these posts is not the request for opinions, but the

communication of information. Counting these posts towards online buble engagement would

result in an overrepresentation of this category and the results would not be representative.

However, to take into account the efforts of the EP to engage the public, all posts have also been

classified as either containing a request for the users’ opinion, or not containing such request.

The EP’s Facebook timeline for the month March 2014 contained 118 posts. This number

was higher than expected, due to a claim made on the EP’s website stating that “twice-daily

updates on EU affairs” (European Parliament, n.d.) were made on Facebook, which would have

resulted in only 62 posts. The results support their statement that every day at least two updates

are posted, except for the first of March on which only one post was posted.

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Figure 1: Type of posts made the European Parliament in March 2014 ( N = 118)

The category that contained the most posts (51 posts) was the reporting on the ongoing

parliamentary activity. Usually these posts described decisions made by the EP on legislative

acts or gave an overview of the topics on the plenary sessions. Occasionally there were posts that

presented the opinion of EP officials on current events; for example the opinion of EP President

Schulz on the Crimea crisis on the second of March (European Parliament, March 2, 2014).

The second largest category, accounting for 37 posts, were the posts that were geared

towards improving the EP’s image: the online bubble engagement. The posts belonging to this

category were diverse in content, for example: posts that request users to send in their picture for

a certain topic; posts that display certain goals that the EP had achieved in the past, such as more

regulation on passenger rights; and posts that promote the EP by showing photos of the buildings

and ‘behind-the-scenes’ at parliamentary work.

Less attention was given to posts that were directed at the engagement with the

parliamentary work, reflected by the fact that only fourteen posts were coded as belonging to this

category. Although this number is representative for the amount of posts, it is relatively

unrepresentative for the actual amount of online engagement events, since ten posts were

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dedicated towards three events; for example the chat with Mikael Gustafsson on Facebook

received four posts.

Even less attention was given to the promotion of offline events (10 posts). Although at

the time the elections for the European Parliaments were only two months away, only five posts

were dedicated towards this event. The last category, unclassifiable, contained six posts, of

which three were cover changes. From a technical point of view, these cover changes themselves

are not posts posted by the EP. Instead, those are posts posted by Facebook on the EP’s timeline

indicating that the EP has changed its cover. One of the covers displayed a political statement,

related to the violence towards women (European Parliament, March 7, 2014). This indicates that

these cover changes could be used by the EP in the same way as posts and this is further

enhanced by the fact that users can and do comment on these cover changes, although further

research with a larger timespan is needed to confirm or disprove this indication. The other three

unclassifiable posts were posts that contained a clear topic, but these topics were unrelated

towards ongoing parliamentary activities and contained no reference towards the activities of the

EP on these topics; for example an animated video in which the discrimination of the LGBT

community is addressed.

Although not representative for all the EP’s Facebook posts made since its creation in

2009, the month March 2014 indicates that the current level of public participation is low. The

two largest categories, the reporting of parliamentary activities and the online bubble

engagement, account for nearly 75% of the posts and are both directed at providing the public

with information. This places the majority of the EP’s Facebook activities on the lowest

classification of Carman’s framework. The posts belonging to the engagement with

parliamentary work category cannot be seen as public participation, because these engagements

have no genuine influence in the decision making process. Instead, these are communications

between one or several MEPs and the public, and are therefore part of the information exchange;

the second lowest classification of Carman’s framework. In fact, none of the EP’s posts can be

classified as belonging to the two highest classifications of Carman’s framework. Not even the

posts regarding the elections, since these posts are promoting an offline event and do not

constitute an online event as mentioned in Carman’s public control classification (p. 46).

The EP requests the opinion of the citizens in the majority of its posts: 76 posts

containing such request against 42 posts which do not. However, except the posts belonging to

15

the engagement with parliamentary work category, this cannot be seen as information exchange

because the requests only asks for the citizens opinion and does not show that it influences the

decision making process. This act is best described by Arnstein’s rung of consultation, in which

the citizens are asked to participate in participation (p. 219-220), and it does not constitute real

participation.

As mentioned in the introduction, Vesnic-Alujevic & Nacarino argued that deliberative

democracy could solve the democratic deficit (p. 68). In order to get this deliberative democracy,

the EP needs to create a venue where citizens can participate in the decision making process. The

results of this research question indicate that the EP does not provide such a venue on its

Facebook page, because it is used for providing information and occasionally for information

exchange, and not for real participation in the decision making process.

5. Research Question Two: What is the quality of the deliberation among citizens?

5.1 Theoretical Framework

This part of the paper deals with the second research question and is structured similar to the first

research question. The quality of participation will be measured by determining in how far the

characteristics of deliberation are present in the comments, based on a qualitative analysis of

these comments. Stromer-Galley (2007) defines deliberation as “a process whereby groups of

people, often ordinary citizens, engage in reasoned opinion expression on a social or political

issue in an attempt to identify solutions to a common problem and to evaluate those solutions”

(p. 3).

She states six elements that are crucial for successful deliberation. The first is reasoned

opinion expression, in which evidence provided support the opinion claims (p.4). The second is

sourcing, which entails that the source of the evidence provided in the reasoned opinion

expression is presented. This in order to verify the validity of the source and to determine what

type of source is used; for example personal experience or academic literature (p. 4-5).

Disagreement is the third element, because it illuminates that an issue needs to be addressed,

while at the same time it shows that there are different perspectives, which in turn reduces the

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chance that the outcome is an extreme measure (p. 5). The fourth element is equality, since no

person should be able to dominate the discussion. Fifth is the element of topic. In order for the

deliberation to benefit from deep consideration, the topic must be adhered to and off topic

comments should be avoided (p. 6). The last element is engagement: participants should engage

with each other, and should avoid just stating their opinion (p. 7).

Halpern & Gibbs (2013) add two more elements for successful deliberation. The first

element is politeness, because impolite messages have a negative effect on the process towards

agreement (p. 1163). The second element is civility, which addresses whether the commenters

are respectful in their description of individuals belonging to other (political) groups, “since

tolerance for individuality has been recognized as a signal of strong democracy” (Halpern &

Gibbs, p. 1163).

5.2 Method

The sample for this research question consist of comments posted to the EP’s posts analysed in

the first research question. Due to the limitations of this paper, it was not feasible to do an

analysis of all comments, and instead 500 comments have been analysed in order to acquire a

general indication. To ensure equal representation in the overall findings, hundred comments of

each of the ‘type of post’ categories were analysed, of which fifty comments belonged to a posts

that contained a request for feedback and fifty comments to posts that lacked such request,

except for the category “engagement with parliamentary work”, since all of those posts included

a request for feedback. The posts to which the comments belong have been chosen randomly.

The coding method in which the comments of users on the Facebook posts are analysed,

has largely been derived from Halpern & Gibbs, although slightly adjusted to better fit the aim of

this paper. In their article ‘Social media as a catalyst for online deliberation? Exploring the

affordances of Facebook and YouTube for political expression’ (2013), Halpern & Gibbs

researched the relationship between the quality of deliberation and the social network service

(SNS) used; in their case the comments on the US White House’s YouTube and Facebook page.

Since this paper only looks at one SNS, only their variables to determine the deliberation of the

comments are used (p. 1163), leaving out the categories social media platform - only Facebook

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in this case - and length of message (this category was used by Halpern & Gibbs to compare the

length of messages between different SNSs). Their variable ‘type of post’ has been altered to be

identical to the ‘type of post’ classification as described and used in the first research question.

Therefore the comments have been classified with the same classification as the post commented

on. The remainder of this section will give an overview of the variables as well as the criteria for

these classifications. Examples of these variables will be given when discussing the results.

Type of Argument

Dahlberg (Computer-Mediated Communication & The Public Sphere, 2001) points out several

difficulties surrounding online discussions. For example, a person can effortlessly create an

illusive account and post misleading information - with or without political motivation (p. 9-11).

On the other hand, flaming and personal emotion can also be posted without difficulties.

Therefore, ‘participants in online fora need to remain skeptical of unverifiable claims and

information’ (p. 11). Even more important for this research, he states that in deliberation the

better argument decides the outcome of the discussion (p. 11).

The quality of argument and the presentation of sources is thus important for deliberation.

In order to determine the quality of the argumentation, the comments have been classified

according to four classifications. The first classification entails comments that contain unfounded

claims with no justification given. The second classification entails comments that contain

unfounded claims, in which the justification given lacks reasoning or sources. The third

classification entails comments with claims that are justified and supported by sources. I would

like to stress that the validity of those sources has not been judged, since this is an fundamental

characteristic of the debate. It is up to other participants in the debate to accept or refute the

sources.

In addition to these three classifications by Halpern & Gibbs, I have added one more

classifications. This classification entails comments that lack any argumentation or allegation.

The reason why this category is added, is because on the EP’s Facebook page this type of

comments were made, while Halpern & Gibbs’ coding method did not account for them.

However, this does not immediately implicate that those comments did not contribute to the

discussion; an example of this is a question related to the topic. On the other hand, there were

comments without argumentation that did not contribute to the topic, such as the posting of the

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emoji of the sun. By coding whether these comments without argument were on or off topic, the

contributing comments have been accounted for.

Topic

In order for a successful deliberation, the conversation must consist of messages that deal with

the topic of the original post (Stromer-Galley, 2007, p. 6). This variable therefore measures

whether the content of a comment is related to the topic of the post. A distinction is made

between on-topic posts (related to the topic) and off-topic posts (unrelated to the topic). Halpern

& Gibbs’ third category of user-to-user messages have been left out, because they followed the

classification of being either on-topic or off-topic.

Equality

Another important factor for successful deliberation is the opportunity for all participants to

equally voice their opinion, in order for all perspectives to be taken into account. No participant

should therefore be in a position where he/she can control the discussion (Stromer-Galley, p. 6;

Dahlberg, p. 12-14). This variable has been measured by using two classifications: one post users

and multiple post users.

Politeness

According to Halpern & Gibbs, impolite comments have a negative influence on the process

towards agreement (p. 1163), and therefore comments have been classified as either polite or

impolite. Impolite comments consisted of the use of curse words, insults and disrespectful

statements, or a combination of the three.

Civility

This variable measures the respect users have for other users, which indicates strong democracy.

Uncivil comments are comments in which no respect is shown for the individuality of another

person. The existence of uncivil content in a comment is measured for this variable,

distinguishing between absent, neutral - in which the comments contain forms of generalisation

and/or mild labels - and derogatory - in which the comments contain forms of disrespectful

stereotypes or disrespect towards groups within society.

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5.3 Results

Although the results are not representative for all comments on the EP’s Facebook page, it does

provide an indication of the quality of deliberation. The results will first be presented and

analysed per category, after which a overall analysis is done in relation to the second research

question.

Types of Argumentation

Figure 2: Type of Arguments made by users on the European Parliament’s Facebook page in

March 2014 ( N = 500)

The first category determined the type of argumentation made. The results show that 39% of the

comments contained a statement or allegation which was not justified by the commenter, and is

the largest classification. An example of this kind of comment is David Alarcón Martínez’s

comment on the tenth of March, in which he states that the EP’s proposal for a universal mobile

phone charger is a “useless plan”, without giving any justification of why he considers this plan

useless (Martinez, March 10, 2014).

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The second largest classification, accounting for 32% of all comments, were comments

that contained a statement or allegation that was poorly justified by the commenter. There is

however a great difference in the quality of these comments. On the one hand this classification

contains posts that have statements which are not clear or unlikely to be plausible. An example is

Ole Olesen’s comment: “ (...) So these [top officials as Barrosso and Schulze] are the European

TRAITORS ... we European People MUST DEFEAT .. ( …) .. in the coming elections .. if WE

want to live in a EUROPE of HOPE and PEACE !” (Olesen, 27 March 2014). On the other hand

there are posts that are plausible and well justified, but lack supporting sources. A short example

of this is Qaz Janssen’s comment on the Ukraine crisis: “Amazingly, as a result of the unrest, gas

prices are soaring” (Janssen, 3 March 2014). Although his statement is plausible and he justifies

why the gas prices are soaring, he fails to provide sources that support his justification and claim.

The classification ‘comments containing justified claims’ only accounts for 5% of all

comments. As mentioned before, the validity of the sources used by comments that were

classified as ‘Justified Claims’ were not judged, and was left to the debate itself. Although 24

justified claims were made, only one comment responded to the validity of the sources used by

another user. In that instance the validity of ‘youtube information’ as a source was - sarcastically

- called into question (Van der Harst, 3 March 2014).

A large portion (24% of all comments) belong to the category ‘comment without

argumentation’. There was a wide variety of comments that belonged to this category. Some of

these comments contained a question, such as Tatiana Polonskaya’s comment “Violence from

the side of women?” (Polonskaya, 7 March 2014). Some only contained a link to a photo,

youtube video or article (Ragull, 7 March 2014; Wysocki, 25 March 2014). Some of these

comments also contributed to include more people in the post, for example Christy Rush who

invited her friend Chris Han to read the post of the EP by ‘tagging’ her friend in a comment

(Rush, 10 March 2014).

As Dahlberg states (2001), deliberation requires good argumentation and provision of

sources. Although not representative, this study indicates that the quality of the argumentation by

the citizens is very low. Of the comments analysed 95% contained no justification or did not

provide sources, while only 5% of the comments contained good argumentation and provided

sources where needed. However drastically this may seem, only little effort is needed to improve

the arguments. In many comments of the ‘poorly justified’ classification, providing a source

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supporting the claim would be sufficient to upgrade the comment to the ‘justified claims’

classification; as example the previously mentioned comment of Qaz Janssen.

Topic

Figure 3: Topics of the users on the European Parliament’s Facebook page in March 2014 ( N =

500)

The majority of comments, 314 out of 500, were on topic. As for the off topic comments, these

can be broadly categorized into three categories. First, there are comments that are topicless, for

example Cornell Michael Williams’ comment in which she quotes a poem (Williams, 10 March

2014) or Csacsa Csucsok’s comment of solely a “:)” (Csucsok, 3 March 2014). Second, there are

comments that have a topic that is not related to the post’s topic. An example is Ryan Kelly’s

comment in which he expresses his euroscepticism, while the post’s topic concerned helping the

homeless. Third, there are comments that have a topic that is closely related to the topic.

However, as Stromer-Galley mentioned, deliberation requires comments that stick to the topic

(2007, p. 6).This was especially prominent in the comments on the posts that concerned violence

against women (3P2, 8P1, 7P2), in which a substantially amount of the off topic comments (for

example: 14 of 22 off topic comments for 7P1) concerned the violence against men or animals.

Although closely related to the post’s topic, these comments did not contribute to the post’s

debate about violence against women and were therefore coded as off topic. In short; although

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the majority of the comments is on topic, a factor which deliberation benefits from, there is still

room for improvement.

Equality

Figure 4: Equality among users on the European Parliament’s Facebook page in March 2014 ( N

= 500)

Although a slight majority of the comments (56%) is posted by users who only post one

comment, the result seems to indicate that the equality is relatively low. In this sample, 281 users

contributed one post, while fifty-one users were responsible for posting 219 comments.

However, I would argue that Facebook is a venue that provides equal deliberation, because in the

sample no person dominated the discussion. Another argument is that Facebook does not limit

access to the discussion, other than being a Facebook member. In the event one person does

dominate a discussion thread, there is still the option to start a new discussion thread by posting a

new comment directly to the post. It is the responsibility of the users themselves to act when they

feel that one person is dominating the discussion.

This research also indicates that frequent posting of comments does not immediately

equal dominance. This is demonstrated by Giselle Dominguez, who with thirty two comments

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was the person who participated most, but did not contribute any post that was supported by

claims, and only ten of the posts were on topic.

Politeness

Figure 5: Politeness of comments on the European Parliament’s Facebook page in March 2014

(N = 500)

Almost all comments posted on the EP’s Facebook page were polite, with only 28 comments

coded as impolite. Among those 28 comments there were posts which were disrespectful, for

example towards women: “No more? I guess she learnt her lesson and won't be stepping out of

line again then” (Clare, 8 March 2014), while others have been coded as impolite due to the use

of swear words; for example: “euro curency it's just shit, (...)” (Dominguez, 13 March 2014).

While analyzing the comments posted on the EP’s Facebook page, it was clear that not

everyone was in favor of the EU, and this was expressed in very different ways. Some comments

that vented eurosceptic opinions contained serious allegations but remained polite, such as: “Or

is the corruption still going on a daily basis?” (Elliot, 25 March 2014). Others resorted to

impolite comments to vent their eurosceptic opinion, for example: “(...) ruled by an elite group of

pigs feeding from a trough. I wipe my backside with the EU flag.” (Rowlands, 25 March 2014).

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This study indicates that the discussion on the EP’s Facebook page is polite, and that

impolite messages are anomalies. Therefore the page is a venue where the process towards

agreement is not likely to be negatively affected by these impolite messages.

Civility

Figure 6: Civility of comments on the European Parliament’s Facebook page in March 2014

(N = 500)

Out of the 500 comments there were twenty four comments that were uncivilized; seventeen with

a neutral connotation and seven with a derogatory statement. An example of an uncivilized

comment with a neutral connotation is Coias’ comment when he refers to another user as

pathetic (Coias, 3 March 2014). An example for a comment containing a derogatory statement

also comes from Coias: “thats why these faggots seem so pissed” (Coias, 3 March 2014). This

study indicates that there is a high level of tolerance towards other groups on the EP’s Facebook

page.

Overall

In order to have proper deliberation, several characteristics needed to be present. This study

indicates that of these characteristics only civility, politeness and equality are present on the EP’s

Facebook page. The amount of comments that were off topic is too high to indicate that deep

engagement with the topic is taking place. This study also indicates that both reasoned opinion

expression and the provision of sources is lacking in the comments, only accounting for 5% of

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the comments. Since these latter two characteristics are the cornerstones of proper deliberation

(Stromer-Galley, p. 4), I argue that this study indicates that the quality of deliberation is low.

6. Conclusion

In order to solve the democratic deficit, Vesnic-Alujevic & Nacarino proposed that social media

was a venue where deliberative democracy could take place (p. 68). This paper set out to find out

whether at the moment Facebook - as a case study for the European Parliament’s social media -

acted as a venue for deliberative democracy. Due to the limitations of this paper, the aim was not

to provide a representative study, but to give a first indication towards the subject and provide a

framework for future research on the topic.

The results of this study indicate that the claim made is valid. For deliberative democracy

a venue needs to be provided where the citizens can participate in the decision making process

by deliberation (Nabatchi, 2010, p. 9; Vesnic-Alujevic & Nacarino, p. 68). As the results of the

first research question indicate, the European Parliament does not provide a venue where citizens

can participate in the decision making process. The second research question indicates that the

quality of the deliberation by citizens is low. Combining the results of both questions to present

an answer for the main research question, the study indicates that both the European Parliament

and the citizens do not use Facebook as a venue for deliberative democracy.

The limitations of this paper were substantial, and are a source for future research. For

example, future research could focus on whether the claim holds its validity when a larger

sample over a longer period of time is analysed, or when another social medium, such as Twitter,

is chosen. Another example for future research is to investigate whether there is a correlation

between the type of post made by the European Union and the quality of deliberation.

The results of this research should not be interpreted in a way that eliminates Facebook as

a venue for deliberative democracy. Facebook still has potential to become a venue for

deliberative democracy, and it is up to further research to find out how exactly Facebook, the EP

and the citizens can improve their contribution to it. And who knows, maybe this leads to a

future in which decisions on Europe are made in polls on Facebook.

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