Cohort: POLS 39

Topic of the thesis: Political Representation in The Digital Age: A Case Study of British Politics

Abstract: In times when politicians fight for their constituents' attention on social media, political representation strategies have been transforming along with the new ways of political communication. Thus, by exploiting a combination of qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods for automatic text analysis, this research aims to explore how digital communication influences political representation strategies. Relying on Mansbridge's theoretical framework it is theorized that: MPs shift from promissory political representation to anticipatory and/or gyroscopic and/or surrogate one(s) because social media offers a much bigger flow of information brought to the attention, a personal space to express own ideas and detach oneself from own political party, and possibilities to attract bigger audience from other constituencies respectively. Overall, the research contributes to the ongoing theoretical debate that explores complex and transforming relations between new media, citizens, and their representatives and demonstrates the utility of computational tools for studying political representation and communication.

Research interests: Political Communication, Political Representation, Computational Social Science, Natural Language Processing, Social Media Analysis.

Graduated from: Erasmus Mundus Joint MA: Charles University, Leiden University, Jagiellonian University;MA: Shanghai University; BA: Nazarbayev University.

Degrees obtained: Erasmus Mundus joint Master's degree in European politics and society; MA in History; BA in Political Science and International Relations

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