The "Country report: LUXEMBOURG" has been based upon data gathered from 28/04/2019 to 15/05/2019.
Alongside the visual representation of the data, a qualitative interpretation is offered.

Chart n°1 - Content typology

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During the first two weeks of the campaign, the 7 parties in Luxembourg that are being monitored have produced a total of 181 items. The party most active on social media is by far the Pirate party which has posted more than twice as much content as the second party in line VOLT. As the chart clearly shows, the different parties make a very different use of social media. There is a striking difference between the Pirate party - which has published more that 55 posts on their official Facebook account - and the ADR - which published less than 5 posts relating the their election campaign in slightly more than two weeks. All parties have produced commercial videos broadcasted on TV as well as posters and banners placarded on the public space. The discrepancy in the charts is due to the fact that several parties have posted their videos, posters and banners on their Facebook profile. They have therefore been included in the category “social” instead of “commercial” or “poster”. Furthermore, some parties - such as ADR and DP - made their material available online (f. ex. on their official websites) before posting them on Facebook, while others such as VOLT haven’t made any of their commercial or print content available at all. It needs to be kept in mind however that the campaign as well as the monitoring are still ongoing and that new material is continuously being published.


Chart n°2 - Focus


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With two exceptions, all parties have mostly released content focusing mainly on Europe - with the Green party posting nothing but content focusing on Europe. In fact, slightly more than half of all content created by all parties taken together falls within this category. It can therefore be said, that the elections of 2019 in Luxembourg are truly European elections as they most taken an explicitly European perspective. Posts which had neither a European nor a national dimension constitute the second biggest type of posts. The Pirate party immediately strikes out in this regard as it has produced more content of this type than content relating to Europe. The posts in question were mainly depicting the installation of banners and posters around the country. The second party constituting an exception to the rule is ADR. It is not surprising that, as the only party campaigning for state sovereignty and self-determination, ADR has posted more content focusing both on a national and European dimension than content dealing mainly with Europe. Only 8.8% of all posts have focused on Luxembourg and less on Europe. Most of these posts were invitations to or descriptions of meetings, gatherings and other events. The international level has barely ever been mentioned in the campaign so far. The posts falling into this category were covering environmental issues from a more global point of view.


Chart n°3 - How is Europe represented?

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Luxembourg is usually described as a rather Europhile country. Not only do the charts confirm that most items produced by all parties taken together are representing Europe positively (43.7%) but furthermore no single item represented Europe in a strongly negative way. Furthermore, DP, the Green party and LSAP have not published any negative material. The most right-leaning party ADR which has chosen the sentence “For a Europe of the Nations” as their motto for the campaign has published more negative content than other parties. Furthermore, their negative posts outweigh the positive ones. Only neutral posts were published more frequently than negative ones by ADR. Negative content posted by ADR was mainly attacking aspects which were seen as a threat to the sovereignty of Luxembourg (such as the introduction of European taxes, the creation of a European army or European immigration policies).
Other topics representing the Eu negatively referd to the role of lobbies in Brussels, the liberalization of the railway system etc… The Pirate party stands out for its content which does not represent the EU at all. This can be explained - as in the previous chart - with the many posts depicting the installation of banners and posters as well as photos taken at events.


Chart n°4 - Rational, emotional or neutral?

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All parties taken together, the message of most content was emotional rather than rational. However, there are discrepancies between the parties. While the Pirate party, VOLT, and the DP have posted more content with emotional messages the opposite is true for CSV, ADR, LSAP and the Green party. All in all, the emotional content was mostly reflecting positive feelings about the campaign, the party or about being part of Europe while only a very small part reflected negative feelings such as anger or danger. The neutral messages were messages without political content. They were - again - mostly posts about events or about the installation of banners and posters.


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