Twitter: @AsiminaMiUnderstanding a digital movement of opinion: The case of #RefugeesWelcome Recent work on digital political engagement has extensively shown that social media platforms enhance political participation and collective action. However, the idea that citizen voice through social media can give rise, under given conditions, to a specific digital force combining properties of social movements and public opinion has received less attention. We fill this gap by analysing the digital discussion around the Twitter hashtag #RefugeesWelcome as a case of 'digital movement of opinion' (DMO). When the refugee crisis erupted in 2015, an extraordinary wave of empathy characterized the publics' reactions in key European hosting countries, especially as a result of viral images portraying refugee children as the main victims. Using a triangulation of network, content and metadata analysis, we find that this DMO was driven primarily by social media elites whose tweets were then echoed by masses of isolated users. We then test the post-DMO status of the hashtag-sphere after a potentially antithetical shock such as the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, which polarized the network public. Overall, we argue that the concept of digital movement of opinion provides a heuristically useful tool for future research on new forms of digital citizen participation.

Does the increasing politicisation of Europe signify a step towards the legitimation of the Union? This could be the case if the increased public intensity of debate and polarisation of opinion brought about by politicisation do not fragment the audience and if arguments presented in public are sufficiently clear about the desired nature of the polity. To answer this question, the focus of this article is on dynamic contestation in the public sphere using original data of news platforms and political blogs in 12 EU Member States and transnational websites during the European Parliament election campaign of 2009. The results are, first, that diffuse eurosceptic evaluations dominate public debates despite large variation in the intensity of debate across Member States. Second, a majority of evaluations made, particularly those by citizens leaving comments online, are negative in all countries included in this study. A gap between elites and citizens persists, but it appears less pronounced than often proclaimed in the literature. And third, democracy is a primary concern in EU polity contestation, especially for those evaluating the EU negatively. Although little evidence is found of a fragmentation of audiences, the prominence of diffuse euroscepticism poses a major challenge to legitimation of the Union.

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The Eurocrisis has generated a deep and ongoing politicization of the EU within and across national public spheres, fuelling age-old and new political and social conflicts, which in turn shape public perceptions of crisis and the legitimacy of 'crisis government'. Focusing on Greece, an EU member state at the epicentre of the crisis, this paper examines how the European polity was contested in the first five years (2009-2013) of the 'Eurocrisis'. During this period, anti-German stereotypes resurfaced in the Greek public sphere in parallel with increasingly mainstream Euroscepticism. Nevertheless, analysis of news and social media content from this period shows that beneath this new-found scepticism towards the EU and Germany's role in it lie two much broader narratives: that of the power struggle between the people and the political elites; and that of an epic clash between diametrically different political ideologies.

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