A Europe that seems united despite Brexit but citizens unafraid to hold back intense, mostly negative emotions, especially fear. This is the picture that emerges from Expert System’s latest social media analysis one year since the historical referendum vote that sanctioned Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit, June 23, 2016). The analysis was conducted on Twitter using the cognitive Cogito technology to analyze a sample of approximately 160,000 tweets in English, Italian, French, German and Spanish related to Europe (more than 65,000 tweets for #EU, #Europe, etc.) and Brexit (more than 95,000 tweets for #brexit, #No2EU, #Remain, etc.) posted between May 21 – June 21, 2017.
The personal dimension in Europe
After the European Union and Brexit, when referencing Europe, we have the world and people, which are most often associated with personal references and interests (our, your, my, life, travel). Work and money were more frequently discussed over topics related to politics, leadership and government (business, work, job, money; politics, government, lead, leader).
The economy was discussed with the same frequency as science and technology. Topics such as culture and food were not ignored, and a lot of attention was focused on current events where today and attack, etc. were among the words most often used on Twitter; the Manchester terror attack and Ariana Grande were also frequently mentioned, as well as the recent episode in Paris on the Champs Elysées).
