Observing Memories Issue 4 | Page 21

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6 . Chart 3 : affinity communities .
the media , which could also explain the growth of its impact on Twitter from 2019 to 2020 . However , there are no monocausal explanations . At the time of the celebration of Europe Day in 2020 , the continent – and indeed the whole world – was in the midst of a widespread lockdown . The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and the ensuing large-scale quarantine have resulted in an unprecedented situation for most of the generations experiencing them , so it makes sense that their impact would be the focus of a large proportion of the debates . In addition , preliminary studies suggest that the pandemic and lockdown may well have fuelled increased use of the internet and social media as sources of information and communication , helping to drive the growth in content relating to Europe Day as well . Moreover , the Schuman Declaration celebrated its seventieth anniversary in 2020 , which is another element to bear in mind when analysing any growth in the date ’ s celebration . Indeed , the hashtags # 70Schuman and # Schuman70 were both very popular .
Focusing on the identification of communities linked to the celebration , it is important to highlight that there was a broad dispersion across isolated , very heterogeneous groups . Also , the language and ideological communities appear to be enormously fragmented between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics .
From the charts above , a comparison of the language communities – led by English [ turquoise ], followed by Spanish [ red ] and French [ green ] – shows that there has been a decline in linguistic diversity and a rise in the hegemony of English from 2019 to 2020 . The second of the two charts provides much more large-scale information . In both charts ( 3 and 4 ), the communities on the upper-left side are related to Euroscepticism ( whether French , Italian , Dutch or Spanish ), while the communities on the lower-right side are pro-European ( but to varying degrees , with a critical , albeit pro-European left that tends slightly toward the Euroscepticism pole at the bottom of the chart ). In addition , the European Commission and its institutional offshoots appear as an important community ( 7.35 %) in the middle of the chart at the epicentre of the phenomenon . The largest community overall is made up of British pro-Europeans ( 11.95 %), who treated the celebration as an ideal opportunity to weigh
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