How do different types of MPs in mixed-member proportional systems signal territorial ties in public communication? This study examines whether directly elected (district) MPs and list MPs in Germany differ in the geographic focus of their social-media posts, introducing a two-dimensional measure that captures both how local referenced places are and how deprived those places are. The paper combines computational place extraction with deprivation linkage to compare the self-presentation of all members of the 19th German Bundestag on Twitter and Facebook.
Data and methods
The authors analyze over 50,000 tweets and 190,000 Facebook posts produced by all members of the 19th German Bundestag (2017–2021). They apply a pipeline using named-entity recognition and Wikidata linkage to identify referenced places and then score those places on two dimensions: proximity to an MP’s constituency (localness) and lack of access to essential public services (deprivation). The abstract describes this as a novel, scalable computational text-analysis approach.
Main findings
The study reports a clear “mandate effect”: district-elected MPs refer to places that are closer to their constituencies and mention deprived areas within constituencies more often than list MPs. The abstract frames these results as advancing understanding of geographic representation and demonstrating the utility of computational text analysis for spatial aspects of political behavior.
Bold takeaways: two-dimensional geographic measure, named-entity recognition + Wikidata linkage, social-media corpus of Bundestag MPs, mandate effect: district vs list MPs
- Data scope: >50,000 tweets and ~190,000 Facebook posts by all 19th Bundestag members (2017–2021).
- Reported pattern: district MPs’ posts are more locally focused and reference deprived constituency areas more frequently than list MPs.
