Social Media, Personalization of News Reporting, and Media Systems’ Polarization in Europe

This chapter uses Twitter data to investigate the extent to which British, Italian, and Spanish journalists employ Twitter to comment on the news as well as reporting on national and European topics, and, conversely, the degree to which the audiences these journalists manage to attract on Twitter reflect the journalists’ or their media outlets’ political affiliations. This will allow us to establish whether Twitter use by journalists and their audiences is leading to a more or less polarised public sphere, with respect to both domestic and European politics.