A country's mobility pattern is largely influenced by its previous historical development and current socio-economic situation. Hungary and Romania, due partly to the legacy of their socialist past, share many of their social and economic characteristics, which differ from countries in Western Europe. Such differences are also present when looking at the issue of international youth mobility, which contrast not only by rate but also by type in post-socialist countries when compared to Western Europe. The main objective of the present paper is to analyse the differences and similarities between Eastern and Western European countries with regard to one mobility programme – Erasmus+. The article presents the differences looking at macro data and quantitative questionnaire data.
Political parties and candidates have not been immune to the changes that the Internet and social media have introduced in electoral campaigns. Yet, as the use of digital media by political elites is becoming a norm in the United States, in Europe, the decision to develop an online presence depends on the cross-national differences regarding candidates’ constraints and incentives. European Parliament elections present an exceptional comparative opportunity to measure this potential diversity. Using an original database on the online presence of more than 5000 candidates competing under the label of incumbent parties in 2014, we demonstrate that there are two relevant groups of nonadopters, and that candidates’ online campaign intensity varies significantly depending on incumbency and the ballot structure in their countries.
In this article we investigate transnational engagement in the destination country and oriented towards the home country, offering a theoretical analysis of the often-neglected simultaneous nature of this phenomenon. Using two original indices, we empirically examine the extent to which young people from six countries (Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania and Spain) are involved in transnational political, economic, social and cultural activities. The study is based on two surveys carried out as part of the H2020 project MOVE, which studied youth mobility in Europe, with a sample of 8,706 young respondents (18-29 years old). Our findings show that migrants’ transnational engagement in their home country and destination is not only simultaneous but mutually reinforcing. This engagement is affected by individual and institutional constraints, which shows that transnational ties and transactions not only produce inequalities but are affected by them.
The present study addresses the effect of the discourse of elites on Twitter on citizens' affective polarisation through a quasi-experiment that was embedded in a survey panel. Participants were invited to follow one of the Twitter accounts of nine candidates from the main political parties during the 2019 European Parliament electoral campaign in Spain. Experiment compliance among participants was confirmed using web-tracking data (passive metre). The results show that exposure to candidates' Twitter accounts by self-selection does not increase affective polarisation. Although high levels of polarisation might contribute to building echo chambers, the polarising content contained in the partisan Twitter accounts has no effect on increasing affective polarisation, even among those who strongly identify with such parties. This finding confirms the so-called limited media effect hypothesis for social media.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.