@inproceedings{8647231,
  abstract     = {{Intra- and interparty connections with peers are crucial for understanding politicians’ behaviour and electoral successes. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to investigate political candidates’ networks through a network analysis based on Twitter data. In particular, we will study the re-tweeting activities between political candidates during the May 2019 election campaign in Belgium. On 26 May 2019, regional, federal and European elections were simultaneously held in Belgium, which allows us to investigate networks among political candidates on different levels of policy-making and to examine the extent to which candidates mainly form networks with candidates campaigning for the same level of policy making. Of the 3.624 candidates who participated in the regional, federal or European election campaign for a party represented in any parliament, 1,157 were active Twitter users during the four months preceding the elections (which is the period in which legal restrictions for campaign expenditure apply). Relying on 20,000 re-tweets between political candidates, we will investigate to what extent networks cluster around different parliaments, also taking into account the language of the candidate. Through multivariate analyses we will also assess how different characteristics of candidates (including their gender, party affiliation, incumbency status) affect their likelihood to mainly form networks with candidates campaigning for the same parliament as they are.}},
  author       = {{Coffé, Hilde and Cioroianu, Iulia and Vandenberghe, Maxime}},
  booktitle    = {{Advances in the Empirical and Theoretical Study of Parliaments, Proceedings}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Konstanz, Germany}},
  pages        = {{23}},
  title        = {{Social media networks of political candidates in Belgium’s multilevel elections}},
  url          = {{https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/48072}},
  year         = {{2019}},
}