Analyzing Citizen Engagement With European Politics on Social Media

Contributions in this thematic issue focus explicitly on citizens and their online engagement with European politics. For social media research the Union, remain an understudied actor type comparison political elites or news organizations. The reason, we argue, is four key challenges facing Union: legal, ethical, technical, cultural. To introduce issue, outline these illustrate how they relate to each contribution. Given that are unlikely dissipate, stress need for open dialogue about them. A part of involves contextualizing findings within constraints which produced. Despite challenges, contributions showcase a theoretical empirical citizens’ activity can illuminate insights into vitally important topics contemporary Europe. These include civic participation, institutional communication, consumption, gender inequality, populism.