No dia 25 de setembro, Tiago Silva (ICS-ULisboa) será o orador convidado de um seminário organizado pelo Grupo de Investigação SPARC sobre o tema PolarScopEU: Mapping and Matching Content Diversity and Bias in the EU. A partir das 14h30 na Sala 1 do ICS-ULisboa e online.

In this seminar, we will present a Python/Flask-based application developed for PolarScopEU, an ERC-funded proof-of-concept project. PolarScopEU is a web-based tool designed to help users explore how political topics are discussed and polarized on social media. Built as a no-code platform, it is easy to use and requires no technical expertise. The initial implementation focuses on the Bluesky platform, with plans to expand to others in the future.

The tool allows users to collect and analyze posts from public accounts and their networks. It automatically detects political topics, tone (positive, neutral, or negative), and mentions of the European Union. Users can explore this processed data and observe how different actors (such as politicians and media outlets) communicate around key issues.

One of the central features is the Bias Plot, which illustrates how biased or one-sided content might be, helping users reflect on the diversity of their media exposure. Originally developed from methodologies in the ERC project MAPLE, the tool brings research-grade methods to the public in an accessible and transparent way.

PolarScopEU aims to empower researchers, journalists, and citizens to better understand how digital conversations shape opinions and to foster more balanced and informed political dialogue.

Tiago Silva is a political scientist and junior researcher at the ICS with a PhD from the department of Political and Social Sciences in the European University Institute (Florence, 2018). His thesis, entitled “Uninformative News or Hollow Campaigns? Political Campaigns on Social Media and the Traditional Media Coverage”, analyzes/compares electoral campaigns, in the press and Internet, from four different countries (Portugal, Italy, US and Brazil), between 2012 and 2015. He also holds a BA in Public Administration and a MA in Political Science, from the University of Aveiro, where he studied communication in European Parliament elections.

His main research interests are political communication and media framing, Internet&Politics, automated methods for content analysis, electronic governance, and the European integration process, particularly its politicization and electoral campaigns.

In recent years, Tiago has been involved in different national and international research projects. Those projects involved topics such as governments’ use of Social Media (United Nations University – EGOV), campaigns for the European Parliament (govcopp – University of Aveiro), VAAs for European elections (EUandI in 2014 and 2019, European University Institute) and, from 2018-2022, Tiago studied the politicization of the EU in the ERC project MAPLE led by Prof. Marina Costa Lobo.

Since 2023, Tiago has been a FCT funded researcher with a research plan entitled "Fast and Broad, but Less Deep!? How Online Political Communication Shapes and Shakes the European Union". With the goal of studying the impact of online communication on politics and attitudes towards the EU, Tiago is currently working on developing new methods and approaches for automated analysis of political communication in different media, and new measures of issue politicization and online polarization.