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Twitter Sentiment:
European Far-right

Juan Ulloa
5/8/18 RIAP 312
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Executive Summary: Twitter users display high amounts of Fear, Negativity,

and Trust towards prominent far-right European leaders

Multiple collections show high levels of fear, negativity, and Trust towards prominent far-right
leaders including Le Pen, Wilders, and Wiedel. RStudio however, most likely executed the trust
sentiment wrong. Many of the tweets collected were rife with sarcasm and other sentiments not
easily determined by the code ran. Twitter views towards these various leaders are likely skewed
as well; supporters of these leaders likely visit less trafficked and more obscure social media
sites including Gab.

Discussion (Overall)

Sentiment scores and graphs were derived via R Studio and transformed using Gephi and
Tableau. The analysis provided measures sentiment scores towards the far-right in Europe in a
general sense. Utilizing these programs, the analyst pulled sentiment scores, graphed the network
surrounding the far right in multiple measures, and pulled meaningful tweets related to the
current discussion and/or narrative surrounding the far-right in Europe.

Far-right groups are coming under increased scrutiny after successful Russian influence
campaigns in the USA and Europe.1 Far-right groups are usually the beneficiaries of these
influence campaigns due to a variety of policy goals that align with the Kremlin.2

Data Collection

For this project, the analyst collected 12,500 Tweets via R using two collections. The first
collection took place 4/24 at 11:30am and gathered approximately 7021 tweets. The second
collection took place 5/8 at 12pm and collected approximately 5508 tweets. The R script
proceeded to perform sentiment analysis using the Syuzhet package. Both collections ended with
the creation of a Gephi graph file and a CSV file.

Exploratory Analysis.

Through the Syuzhet package exploratory analysis was performed. Major themes through both
collections were found and are explained via the following tables.

1st Collection
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2nd Collection
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Discussion (Topics)

The Far-right is currently campaigning on a populist narrative. Populism as a political

philosophy rejects the “corrupted elite” and instead focuses on championing the “average
citizen”. Far-right candidates in Europe ran on varied platforms however, areas of noted
similarity arose including promises to reduce immigration and weaken or leave the EU.

Both topic tables reflect the populist narrative. The first collection reflected non-interventionism
in response to US strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities, the othering of Muslims, and
proverbial martyr (Marine Le Pen) for the far-right cause.

The second collection reflected a shift towards election efforts as Europe’s elections near. As a
result most of the topics switched to domestic issues.

Classifier Sentiment Analysis (2nd collection only)

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Discussion (Classifier Analysis)

Geert Wilders: Head of the Dutch PVV. The party is known for its anti-Islam platform.
Sentiment scores towards Wilders were unflattering with scores in Fear, Negativity, and Sadness
being his highest measures. Positivity is also high, most likely due to die-hard PVV supporters.

Alice Weidel: Head of the German AfD. The party is also known for anti-immigration and anti-
Islam platform. Scores for Weidel were not positive; Fear, Sadness and Negativity were her
highest scores.

Marine Le Pen: Head of the French National Front. This party is known again for anti-
immigration and anti-EU stances. Le Pen’s scores were aberrant, text from the tweets gathered
were generally negative and included trolling. Actual sentiment towards Marine Le Pen likely
follows that of the two prior leaders.
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Classifier Analysis by Number (2nd Collection Only)

Discussion

For brevity chose 2nd collection for discussion, 1st collection follows closely. As expected the
stars of the European far-right had more tweets pulled. Wilders, LePen, and Weidel accounted
for 75% or more of the total tweets collected while newcomers Norbert and Okamura struggled
into the single digits.
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Gephi (First collection)

Key Influencers
 Alice Weidel: Twitter account where she tweets out afd’s political narrative
 SandraTXAS: appears to be a bot, her profile is indicated as such by bot detectors and
she retweets a specific narrative prolifically.
 AMike: is listed as a Canadian that affirms far-right causes, he straddles the line between
bot and real person.
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Gephi (Second Collection by Degree)

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Gephi (Second Collection by Betweenness)

Key Influencers
 ContraAfD1: A German twitter user that fights the far-right’s narrative by comparing it to
past events and political leanings especially Nazism.
 V_of_Europe: Self-titled “conservative” media outlet. News articles posted lean far-right.
 czSkaut: Scouting organization based in the Czech Republic. Most likely appears due to
the positivity of scouting among all political views.
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Selected Tweets (1st and 2nd Collections)

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Results

Twitter sentiment towards the European far-right is generally unfavorable. Leaders

associated with the groups suffer from negative sentiment scores related to their
platform, tactics, and local history. Marine Le Pen’s data is aberrant when looking at the
scores of both Wilders and Weidel, however if another collection was run it the positive
scores would likely correct as Wilders did during the 2nd collection.

Situation Background

Far-right groups are becoming increasingly vocal and visible in the public eye both in Europe
and the USA.3 These groups often push for reduced participation in global entities, limited
immigration, and other populist legislation. In addition, these groups often have Russian backing
due to shared goals related to a weakened EU and NATO.4 Far-right parties that received
Russian funding include the National Front (Le Pen), Freedom Party (Hofer), and Lega Nord
(Matteo Salvini).5,6

A direct relationship exists between the rise of far-right groups and the weakening of democracy
in Europe. Far-right leadership in both Hungary and Poland decreased freedom house rankings
through legislation targeting independent institutions, immigration, and through xenophobia.7

Policy Recommendations
 American funding for liberal political groups in countries where populism is rising
or where Russian disinformation campaigns are uncovered
 Increased social media regulation to require the outlawing of bots, stricter
personal information security, and robust fact checking
 Increasing resources dedicated to the mitigation of Russian hybrid warfare at
home and abroad.

Analytic confidence

The analyst has moderate confidence in the results due to high source reliability and
limited knowledge of machine learning.
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/us/politics/russia-mueller-election.html
2 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/putin-trump-le-pen-hungary-france-populist-bannon/512303/
3 Kirk, A. (2018, January 11). How the rise of the populist far-Right has swept through Europe in 2017. Retrieved February 18,

2018, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2017/10/24/rise-populist-far-right-has-swept-europe-2017/

4 Gatehouse, G. (2017, April 03). Marine Le Pen: Who's funding France's far right? Retrieved February 18, 2018, from

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39478066
5 https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-party-signs-cooperation-deal-with-italys-far-right-lega-nord
6 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/europe-s-far-right-enjoys-backing-russia-s-putin-n718926
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7 https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017