An emerging EU strategic narrative? Twitter communication during the EU’s sustainable energy week

Abstract

This paper approaches the subject of the global recognition of the term 'Normative Power Europe' in external energy governance by engaging with the concept of strategic narratives.The paper considers reactions to the European Union (EU) as a normative energy actor within a tripartite scheme of strategic narrative formation, projection and reception (Miskimmon et al, 2013;Roselle et al, 2014). The definition of a narrative suggests the presence of an actor, an action, a goal or intention, a scene and instrument. Those were identified for the emerging 'Sustainable Energy Europe' narrative and tested in one empirical case study: Twitter communications surrounding the EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) 2013. In its method, our analysis is among the first to explore empirically the EU's social media communication efforts. Answering a call for richer methodologies, which view social media data not as 'quantitative data, rather qualitative data on a quantitative scale' (D'Orazio, 2013 np), our analysis uses an original methodology and codes the Twitter data using a nuanced qualitative framework.

Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector

“…That same study concluded that more public opinion research is needed to enable a people-centric just transition. Tweets related to energy-related topics from the EU Sustainability Energy Week were used to map stakeholders' significant energy concerns and emotional tendencies towards these issues by Bain and Chaban 71 . Veltri and Atanasova 72 explored the network topology of climate change tweets and news media articles for automated text classification according to psychological process categories.…”

Security and digital nationalism: speaking the brand of Australia on social media

“…The proliferation of digital technologies could mediate the effectiveness of strategic narratives among the targeted national or international communities. On the one hand, international actors utilize digital tools to disseminate strategic narratives and win support in international targeted communities (Bain and Chaban, 2017). Populist leaders and parties worldwide thrive in the distinctive architecture of digital media to spread nationalistic content in the promotion of political viewpoints (Mihelj and Jiménez-Martínez, 2021).…”

“…One the other hand, social media has offered the realm allowing for various forms of vernacular practices (Szarecki, 2020). It has provided citizens with the opportunity to better access information, participate in political debates (Fuller et al, 2018), and to engage with international affairs (Bain and Chaban, 2017). Social media influencers (abbreviated as influencers) formed by regular internet users who are devoted to building followings express their stance toward social-political affairs (Abidin, 2021; Abidin, 2019).…”

“…Their engagement enables the affordance of an alternative source of information that can rival the position and voice promoted by mainstream media (Lewis, 2020). This participatory mode of vernacular discourses afforded by digital technologies has transformed the dominant position of elites in structuring political discourse through their privileged access to traditional communication channels (e.g., TV, radio and newspapers) (Davis et al, 2018), challenging states who used to monopolize the space of international relations (Bain and Chaban, 2017).…”

Tracing the Trends in Sustainability and Social Media Research Using Topic Modeling

“…Ghazali et al underscored the importance of public awareness in mitigating the negative externalities associated with CO 2 emissions, climate change, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) through a survey of residents in five states of Malaysia [81]. The analysis of the EU's social media communication efforts presented the likely view [82], while Gupta showed how the power of social media can be leveraged for social goods such as the provision of micro lending in India [83].…”