Observing Memories Issue 4 | Page 22

7 . Chart 4 : language communities .
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in against Brexit . Indeed , the separation between the right and the left is apparent in the language communities within every state , marking an internal polarisation that appears to be sharper than for any other celebration . Lastly , if we compare the changing makeup of these communities between 2019 and 2020 , we detect a sharp increase in Euroscepticism , especially in France and Italy . Also new in 2020 is the appearance of the Vatican ( 4.42 %) through its account @ pontifex , which acted as a bridge between Eurosceptics and pro-Europeans , given that the account interacted with both communities .
In the content analysis , the tweets with the greatest impact were once again put out by the European Commission in relation to the Schuman Declaration ( 3,900 retweets ). The European Commission seized on the opportunity to call for political unity in the face of the Covid-19 crisis and it posted a video with messages of support from top EU leaders ( 830 retweets ). In comparison with the previous year , it is also important to highlight that all of the posts from the account @ UE _ Commission had only 3,772 retweets in 2019 , so we can observe an increase in the institution ’ s reach in social media . However , a discourse analysis of the conflict between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics provides more clues than the EU ’ s own institutional context does , if we are to gain a better understanding of the new formulas of commemoration .
For example , we can observe a large pro- European community active in the United Kingdom , logically because of Brexit . In this group , the tweet with the greatest impact was posted by the political analyst Derek James (@ derekjames150 ), who raised the question : “ On # EuropeDay2020 , how many of you wish the UK was still a member of the EU ?”. However , leading political profiles , particularly members of the Labour Party , also played an important role , including David Lammy (@ DavidLammy ) and Richard Corbett (@ RichardGCorbett ). The overall thrust of the community , broadly speaking , was to challenge Brexit by means of discourses centred on the idea of fraternity . Noteworthy in this respect was the absence of a contrary discourse in the UK from Brexiteers , who are generally highly active in social media but were not very mobilised on the occasion in 2020 . Turning to France ’ s pro-European community , the most popular tweet was posted by President Emmanuel Macron , who quoted President of the European Council Charles Michel and posted the official video mentioned earlier . Macron ’ s discursive line was to use the celebration to address the Covid-19 crisis by drawing a political parallel
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Observing Memories ISSUE 4