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Mapping the e-petition ecosystem through Social Media: mobilization in the EU across issues and ideologies

This seminar session will present the research work of Carlo Santagiustina, a researcher at the medialab, on e-activism through an analysis of the dynamics of mobilising petitions circulated on social networks.

Event, Research Seminar

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salle Goguel, 56 rue des saint pères, 75007 Paris

Abstract

We study petition-related mobilization on social media across issues and ideologies. Using calls to sign petitions on X in the seven most spoken EU languages, we build the first multi-platform, multi-language map of the e-petitioning ecosystem. To ensure cross-language and cross-ideology comparability, we infer the issues behind calls for signatures using ManifestoBERTa, and users' ideological orientation via ideology scaling methods calibrated with expert survey data. We classify active individuals into an ontology of mobilization types.
Results show that e-petition activism is issue-specific and short-lived, with only a small portion of individuals engaging in sustained mobilization. We characterize differences in e-activism across the Left-Right spectrum: right-leaning users are most active on issues like political corruption and traditional morality, while environmental protection sees lower engagement levels despite its broad reach.

Biography

Carlo R. M. A. Santagiustina is a researcher for the SoMe4Dem H2020 project at SciencesPo Paris MediaLab. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Ca’ Foscari University Venice in 2018, with a thesis on social media discussions about collective uncertainties, focusing on their impact on political uncertainty and financial markets. His research interests span Behavioural Economics, Social Psychology, Digital Methods, Computational Social Sciences, Media Studies, Statistics, and Computational Linguistics.

 

Practical information

The session will take place on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM, in person and in English at Sciences Po, Room Goguel, 56 rue des Saints-Pères, Paris 75007.

Registration is mandatory via this link.