Beyond Erasmus . Communication of European Universities alliances on social media

The European Union has suffered several problems in recent years, which triggers a proactive action by its institutions to generate a united citizenry and awareness of the importance of the EU. In the field of higher education, the European Strategy for Universities born in 2019 aims to strengthen and developed a common university system. The Erasmus program has traditionally been identified as the main driver of integration, but the emergence of European universities may mark a new phase in the shaping of the European Public Sphere ( EPS ). In this sense, social media are the key communication tool for higher education centers. The objective of this work is to examine the activity on social media of the 40 consortia of European Universities belonging to the first and second calls. First, the presence on the different social networks of these entities is analyzed to establish a map of the alliances, based on the number of social networks used, the volume of followers, the coordinating university and the year of the call. After identifying Twitter as the most used network, a content analysis is carried out on 12 variables of all the messages published by these consortia since their creation, with the aim of determining whether the content published on their Twitter accounts is professional in tone. The results reveal scant interactivity that does not take advantage of the potential of social networks. However, there is a certain influence of the national cultures in terms of use of digital platforms in the different countries that head each consortium, with Spain and France being rather remarkable in this aspect. Likewise, the advantage acquired by first-generation consortia boosts their greater impact. This leads to a reflection upon the true transnational dimension of the communication implemented by these universities.


Introduction
European Universities are a recent commitment of the European Commission within the Erasmus Plus programme to coordinate a new higher education area. According to the European Strategy for Universities (European Commission, 2019), the aim is to create a strong university network that promotes citizen participation, social cohesion and a sense of belonging to the Union. In a context of ongoing crises and the rise of cultural Euroscepticism (Treib, 2021), which questions supranational integration processes on identity-based grounds, the document positions the university system as a vital agent for the interests of the EU.
Specifically, the initiative aims to support a total of 60 European Universities comprising more than 500 institutions by mid-2024. European Universities operate as consortia of higher education institutions spread across the countries that are part of the Erasmus area, and are therefore mainly funded by Erasmus, but also by Horizon Europe or the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism. They also respond to a request from European leaders at the Gothenburg Summit in Sweden in November 2017, which called for initiatives to strengthen strategic alliances in higher education.
The development of alliances is evidence of the proactive and pro-European policy implemented by EU institutions, with strong implications in the field of communication. This is visible in the massive use of social networks at an institutional level (Vesnic-Alujevic, 2016), as well as in the fact that the officials of these bodies recognise that they prioritise segmented communication campaigns aimed at young people (Rivas-de-Roca; García-Gordillo, 2022a), who constitute the population group most present in universities. After Brexit, the EU seems to want to move beyond the so-called "permissive consensus", which consisted of a tacit acceptance of the European project (Bee; Bozzini, 2010), replacing it with a more robust support based on the generations that will play responsible roles in the future.
Following the resolution of the three calls (2019, 2020 and 2022), there are 44 European Universities comprising approximately 240 higher education institutions, both from capital cities and remote regions in 31 countries, including all EU Member States plus Iceland, Norway, Serbia and Turkey. These university consortia collaborate with over 1,300 partners ranging from NGOs to businesses to local and regional authorities. The potential synergies generated link with the four formal goals set by the European University Strategy: 1) to strengthen the dimension of the higher education system and its research; 2) to support universities as beacons of the European way of life; 3) to empower universities as players in the green challenge and the digital transition; and 4) to reinforce these institutions as drivers of the EU's global and leadership role.
On the European continent, universities have undergone a profound transformation in the last 20 years, characterised by greater internationalisation and reputational competitiveness due to the proliferation of rankings (De-Aguilera-Moyano; Farias-Batlle; Baraybar-Fernández, 2010; Bustos-González, 2019). Similarly, the growing concern for transparency in public spending has led universities to improve their communication policies in order to fulfil their third mission (Montesinos et al., 2008), that is, their commitment to society. This need makes it necessary to professionalise communication tasks, similar to what is happening at EU institutions.
University policy, but also the use of social networks by countries (Newman et al., 2022) or the degree of involvement in a potential European public discussion (Hänska; Bauchowitz, 2019), are determined by national and even local factors. Faced with this, initiatives such as the European Universities can spur a new type of integration, beyond the mere exchange of the Erasmus programme. In this context, this research seeks to explore these university spaces as autonomous institutions beyond their constituent entities, analysing their communication and capacity to influence public opinion. This is a pioneering approach to the communicative dimension of a recent transnational phenomenon, contributing to the state of the art. The aim is to shed light on the value of institutional communication in these publicly funded consortia.
Universities have undergone a profound transformation in the last 20 years, characterised by greater internationalisation and reputational competitiveness Traditionally, academia has focused on the role that the media might play in the EPS (Gripsrud; Weibull, 2010; Grill; Boomgaarden, 2017), illustrating the persistence of a predominantly national approach that continues to this day (Berry et al., 2021). However, the consolidation of digital platforms as political spaces (Casero-Ripollés, 2018), together with the personalisation and mediatisation of democratic processes (Amado, 2016), lead to a certain optimism that digital technologies will make it possible to achieve the EPS.
Authors such as Scharkow and Vogelgesang (2010) pointed out that information was not only key to promoting better knowledge of the EU, but that education should also play an important role. These academics referred to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), which they argued would have a greater impact on countries with a longer history as member states. This approach did not prevent the European Parliament elections from remaining in the collective imagination as second-rank elections (Schneider, 2018), which saw a slight increase in turnout in 2019. Institutional action now appeals directly to citizens, bypassing the filter of the press, although it is still very relevant in the articulation of public opinion (Nielsen;Ganter, 2018). In this sense, social networks enjoy interaction mechanisms that are linked to the notion of deliberative democracy that the EPS entails (Häussler, 2018). Faced with the secular absence of information on the EU in the national media (Goldberg; Brosius; De-Vreese, 2022), the EU is committed to Europeanising citizens, given that all inhabitants of the member states are potential members of this ideal space for debate.

Transnational European communication
The different crises experienced by the European project have led the EU to implement a new type of public communication, based on reconfiguring the idea of Europe (Papagianneas, 2017). Therefore, EU institutions are optimistic about the possibilities that digital public discussion can have for the European project. Citizen use of digital platforms would thus encourage the creation of the EPS, given that tools such as Twitter are an effective way of solving the problem of geographical distance from the EU (Tuñón Navarro;. This conviction motivates the communication policy to occupy a privileged position in the EU organisational chart, with a special interest in social networks (Olsson;Hammargård, 2016 In addition to the above issues, there are structural problems such as the lack of interest in the EU or the tendency for political activity on social media to be negative (Kim et al., 2021). All of these operate as conditioning factors that determine inclusivity and a true discursivity around the Union. Despite this, pan-European communication in the digital era also benefits from new low-cost instruments that make it possible to overcome the well-known communication deficit (Fazekas et al., 2021). Moreover, institutions seem to be increasingly focusing on citizens (Oleart, 2023), which is a contrast to their previous actions. It is therefore of particular interest to address the analysis of institutional communication in this digital environment.
The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has a greater impact on countries with a longer history as member states

Social networks as an institutional communicative element shaping public opinion
The aforementioned digitisation is one of the most significant challenges facing corporate and institutional communication as a whole (Almansa-Martínez; Fernández-Souto, 2020; Zerfass et al., 2021). According to the European Communication Monitor, digitisation is the main reason for the rapid transformation of communication departments, consultancies and agencies.
Specifically, the phenomenon of social media has profoundly changed the way institutions communicate with their audiences (Roth-Cohen; Avidar, 2022). There is consensus on the interactive potential of these communication channels (Allagui; Breslow, 2016), which also contribute to strengthening engagement with audiences (Moreno; Fuentes-Lara; Khalil, 2018). At the same time, these technologies have allowed organisations, such as European institutions or universities, to communicate directly with their audiences without intermediaries (Sallot et al., 2003;Hinson, 2017), although this communicative independence coexists with an empowerment of audiences (Navarro-Beltrá; García-Medina; Miquel-Segarra, 2020).
However, other research has shown that institutions are not taking advantage of the interactive possibilities of social networks (Kent, 2013) and that their use is more tactical than strategic (Moreno et al., 2015). This coincides with professional reports that detect that professionals not only do not feel prepared, but also consider that their organisations are not committed to the paradigm shift (Zerfass et al., 2021).
In this sense, social networks have become one of the main communication tools for universities to connect with internal and external audiences (Pringle; Fritz, 2019). In 2014, over 97% of Spanish universities had a Twitter account (Gómez-Calderón; Paniagua-Rojano, 2014). In fact, during the Covid-19 health crisis, universities mainly used Twitter to communicate with their audiences (Ferrer-Serrano; Latorre-Martínez; Lozano-Blasco, 2020). In this regard, it is important to select the right social networks based on their own interests and align them with their communication strategy to connect with their audiences (Peruta; Shields, 2017), with a growing use of Instagram being noticeable (Alcolea-Parra; Rodríguez-Barba; Núñez-Fernández, 2020).
Social networks are effective tools for achieving this connection and emotional engagement (Clark; Algoe; Green, 2018). For example, following social networks is generally related to a greater perception of the quality of the university by students, and, therefore, greater connection (Mostafa, 2015). Consequently, the correct planning of the institutional strategy of universities is essential to connect with different audiences, which is directly related to the importance that university governing bodies give to digital communication (García-García, 2018).
Together with the strategic planning of communication, the quality of the content published is key to achieving better interaction and, therefore, more followers on social networks (Lund, 2019). According to a recent study conducted in various geographical contexts, university publications on social networks are aimed at improving their institutional positioning and reputation (Capriotti; Losada-Díaz; Martínez-Gras, 2023), an instrumental sense also observed in more qualitative research with the communication managers of these institutions (Simancas-González; García-López, 2022).
In a changing context, European Universities are a new communicative phenomenon, with a plural and diverse audience, given that these consortia are made up of universities from different countries. Therefore, it is relevant to explore whether they are as institutionally active on social networks as their national counterparts. In view of the lack of studies on the subject that would allow us to draw hypotheses based on the literature, the following research questions are proposed: RQ1. On which social networks are European Universities present? RQ2. What is the volume of followers, as well as the information available on the profiles of these universities? RQ3. How professional are their profiles on the preferred platform, in terms of original posts and regular updates?

Methodology
The main objective of this research is to make a first approximation to the social media presence of the 40 European Universities belonging to the first and second calls (see Appendix 1 with the full data), understood as consortia of conventional universities. This is the entire sample universe of these initiatives, excluding the four new universities approved in the resolution of the third call (27 July 2022), given that they have only just started and do not have a significant presence on the Internet. Moreover, and due to the exploratory nature of this research, two different stages have been established to achieve the secondary objectives.
In the first stage, the presence of the 40 European Universities on the different social networks has been analysed with the aim (RQ1) of drawing up a map of these alliances. This is a descriptive analysis taking into account the number of social networks used, the volume of followers, the coordinating university and the year of the call. From this first analysis, Twitter has been identified as the social network most used by the majority of European consortia. Of the 40 European universities, 37 have a presence on Twitter.
The second stage of the research focused on analysing the use of Twitter by the 37 university alliances, downloading all their messages through Twitonomy up to 9 October 2022. On the one hand, (RQ2) to analyse their presence on Twitter based on the information of their profiles, the number of followers, the year the account was created. On the other hand, (RQ3) to find out whether European Universities use their Twitter accounts professionally, which has to do with the number of original messages, but also with the frequency. Both elements denote that social media activity is provided in a professional manner.
To answer the research questions, a quantitative methodology was used, applying the technique of content analysis to all tweets published by the 37 European consortia from the time of their creation up to 9 October 2022. Each of these universities start their activity on different dates, although they belong to the same call for European funds, which has led us to collect all messages in order to determine the sample universe of tweets. The collection and coding of the data was carried out between 18 September and 23 November 2022, using a content analysis form designed ad hoc based on Medina-Aguerrebere, Medina and González-Pacanowski (2022).
Although the actual content of all the tweets was not analysed, 12 items that overlap with the nature of the messages were examined, grouped into three categories.
-The first part comprises a technical sheet composed of (1) the year the account was created and (2) the number of followers. -Secondly, the presence of the different European consortia has been analysed based on the information contained in their Twitter profiles, namely (3) presence of the corporate logo, (4) use of hashtags, (5) link to the corporate pages, (6) full description of the consortium (for this point it has been taken into account whether the mission of the alliance is described), mention of the partners and the location, and finally (7) link to Erasmus Plus. -The third part of the sheet corresponds to the tweets published during the period analysed. In this section, we have analysed (8) the total number of tweets from each of the European universities, (9) the number of tweets per day, (10) the percentage of original tweets, (11) the percentage of replies and (12) the percentage of retweets. The type of tweet provides insight into the degree of involvement in the production of original content and its response capacity. All these data are compared across alliances to provide an overview of their use of social networks.
Finally, as an exploratory qualitative analysis, the open artificial intelligence tool Abbrevia.me, which uses ChatGPT technology, has been used to analyse the image projected by a Twitter account to its users based on its content. This analysis has been conducted with the ten European University accounts with the highest number of followers. This approach to content was completed using the Nvivo Release 1.7.1 program to generate word clouds with the most used terms in their publications (including mentions and hashtags) on each of the accounts, in order to determine the main topics and degree of interaction of the consortia.

Presence of European Universities on social networks
Social media seems to be a common communication tool for European Universities. All the consortia that emerged from the Commission's first and second calls have social networks to address their communities, although the map they draw is uneven in different aspects (Table 1). The predominant social networks are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Only one (Arqus Alliance) has Spotify and in almost all cases the social media profiles are linked on the homepage of their websites, with the exception of AllianceYufe.
From this first approximation, it can be deduced that the new European universities have considered social networks to be an essential space for publicising their activities and establishing a dialogue with their communities, at least in a formal way. Of these, Twitter stands out as the most used network, followed by Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn (which coincide in the number of accounts) and, finally, YouTube.
The above platforms are the most popular among the general population, but it is worth noting that Twitter is a social network that stands out in terms of information. Furthermore, the data suggest that the frequency of social network use seems to vary between countries, with Instagram and TikTok being the most common among university-age young people (Newman et al., 2022). However, during the period under study, none of the European universities had TikTok.
If we analyse the number of networks that each consortium has according to the call to which they belong, we find the following data (Table 2).
European Universities are a new communicative phenomenon, with a plural and diverse audience, given that these consortia are made up of universities from different countries According to the information available, the second-generation consortia were committed from the outset to having a presence on social networks. The behaviour of the first-generation entities was more cautious, perhaps because in 2019 the European Universities initiative was at an early stage and there was still uncertainty as to how these new entities would materialise. In any case, most of them had profiles on three or more social networks, suggesting that they saw these platforms as a window of communication to their communities.
Following the ranking of the most used social networks, available in Table 1, presented below are the leading European Universities by number of followers on each of the platforms, following the localised order and incorporating descriptive information on their type of use. The coordinating university is of great interest, as its state affiliation may explain the social media activity of the alliances. In the case of Twitter (Table 3), the fact that it is the network with the largest number of consortia means that a content analysis is subsequently directed towards it, complementing the data presented here. Firstly, it is striking that two of the leading European universities on Twitter (Una.Universitas and Civis) do not state on their websites which institution is the coordinating institution, which denotes a certain lack of transparency, given that EU calls require this figure. Of the eight consortia with available information, three have Spanish coordinating universities, two French, two from the Netherlands and one from Norway. This shows some repetition in the countries that manage these profiles with the greatest impact.
Beyond the differences in the number of followers, which will be referred to in the following section, the data reveal that only two of the 10 alliances highlighted on Twitter have accounts on the five networks analysed. Four are present on four of these platforms, two on three, one on two and only one is exclusively dedicated to Twitter, from which it can be deduced that this network is not usually used solely, but rather accompanied by a presence on other channels. In this sense, the second most important space for the audience is Facebook.  In the case of Facebook (Table 4), there is a repeated lead for consortia created in the first call and which account for the majority of the list, in a finding that was also observed for Twitter. Specifically, only two European Universities from the second call rank in the top ten for Facebook, and they do so in the last two positions. The year of difference between alliances thus seems to determine the impact in terms of number of followers.
Another relevant fact is that half of the top ten European Universities have accounts on the five main social networks, while three have accounts on four platforms, one on three and one on two of them. Therefore, the use of Facebook is more often complemented by other social networks, with Facebook occupying a central position. For their part, the countries of origin of the coordinating universities are very similar to Twitter. Table 4 shows how Spain stands out with three, France with two, and the Netherlands and Portugal with one respectively. This predominance of Spain and France is even greater on LinkedIn. According to the data available on LinkedIn (Table 5), first-generation universities still have a seven-to-three lead. However, the fact that some second-generation universities (Ulysseus and Eelisa) occupy leading positions in terms of volume of contacts is new. The cost of learning to position oneself on these networks is lower, at least for two alliances led by Spanish institutions.
It should be noted that five of the 10 have accounts on all the social networks analysed, again reflecting their complementary use. Moreover, as mentioned above, Spain (four), France (three) and the Netherlands (one) stand out by country, the latter through ECIU, which had a notable presence on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. As opposed to the lesser difficulty of consolidation on LinkedIn of the second call universities, the figures for Instagram (Table 6) show a great predominance of the oldest entities on this social network. In fact, only one European University is among the top 10 in 2020. Despite the dynamism that characterises this platform, the number of followers is very much determined by the trajectory of the account, that is, by the time elapsed since its creation.
On the other hand, five consortia have accounts on the five social networks and four have accounts on six of them, which may be related to the fact that it is considered a complementary network to the other networks for improving interaction with young people, but not a platform for informing the entire community. The usual reference countries (Spain and France, with three consortia) are joined by Germany and Portugal, with one respectively. Finally, with regard to YouTube (Table 7), the fact that the universities in the first and second calls for applications share the top ten positions equally is striking. In terms of the number of networks, eight of the ten have accounts on all of them, one has four and only one has two. This would confirm that, like Instagram, it is considered a complementary network to the rest of them, even more than it. In terms of countries, Spain stands out with three European University consortia, Portugal with two and France and the Netherlands with one.
The results show that there are several first-generation European Universities that once again occupy a privileged position on most social networks. Spain and France, two highly populated Member States with a long history of relevance to the EU, emerge as the home territories of the institutions with the highest impact on social networks. By platforms, LinkedIn and YouTube operate as spaces with a more permeable entry barrier, allowing the audience to be reached in less time, which may be of interest to universities joining in future calls.

Twitter as the preferred platform for dissemination
The value placed on Twitter by the vast majority of European Universities leads to a focus on this social network, in a context where EU institutions promote this type of direct digital communication. In fact, the funding granted for this initiative has a mandatory work package dedicated to communication. This sub-section is therefore structured as follows.
Firstly, a description of the main elements used by the accounts is provided, as well as their impact on the number of followers. Next, an assessment is made of whether a professionalised action is performed on the basis of a content analysis, which compiles the data to provide calculations on the volume of daily tweets, percentages of own tweets, retweets and replies.
All European Universities have a corporate logo as their Twitter profile image, to which a link to the corporate pages of each consortium is added. The only exception is EU-Conexus, which does not have such a link. In contrast, there are several universities that do not provide a corporate description in their profile, in the sense of informing about the centres that make up the project and the mission of the project.  With regard to the location of the account in their Twitter descriptions, 20 of the 37 do not indicate any location, 12 are generically located in Europe, two indicate countries but no city, and three are located in specific countries (Belgium, France and Germany), where their coordinating universities are from.
The number of followers again shows huge differences between first-and second-generation European Universities (Figure 1). Most of the latter do not reach 1,000 followers, the main exception being Circle U., coordinated for the Norwegian University of Oslo. In contrast, there are several first-generation alliances with well over 1,000 followers. Una.Europa, Charm Eight and Civica are the highest volume cases in this area, with over 2,000 followers.
With regard to the production of messages, there is a very disparate volume between the different alliances, although a lower number of tweets published per day can be seen in the second-generation alliances ( A high volume of production can be linked to the existence of a dedicated communication team. In this respect, another factor to consider is the volume of own tweets or replies, which imply a higher degree of work than merely retweeting. To this end, Table 9 shows the type of messages that prevail in each of the European universities, together with their percentage. Most universities concentrate their efforts on their own tweets, but it is not negligible that 10 of them do not reach 60% of their own tweets and that another 11 of them prioritise retweets. According to the data collected, the alliances that stand out for a higher production of original tweets are Eugloh (93.1%), EurecaPro (91%), Arqus Alliance (88.7%) and Film EU (73.4%). On the contrary, the content of the ECDU (76.7%), EDUC (68.5%) and ECIU (60.7%) consortia is based on retweeting content from other accounts. Meanwhile, the alliances with the highest proportion of responses are Eudres (45.2%) and Ulysseus (41.1%). It should be noted that the average response rate of all consortia is 9.8%, a fact that demonstrates the unidirectional nature of the accounts. In fact, the profiles of Eugloh, FilmEU and Invest do not have any response tweets. The figures in bold refer to those accounts posting more than one tweet per day on average. * Twitter accounts created prior to the European Universities call. Table 9. Distribution of the type of tweets by consortium (%)

Predominance of own tweets
Eugloh ( On the other hand, Figure 2 shows the proportion of own content, retweets and replies, and their relationship with the number of followers. In this sense, Una Europa, the consortium with the highest number of followers, has a majority of original and own content (59.9% compared to 33.6%), with a response rate of 7.1%. In contrast, the European University with the lowest number of followers, Aurora, has a very similar percentage between original tweets (52.8%) and retweets (45.2%), and a response rate of 1.9%. Moreover, EDUC is the second with the second highest number of retweets and also one of those with the lowest volume of followers and messages published per day.
It is important to be cautious when interpreting this data because there are consortia that combine a high percentage of original tweets and responses with a very low number of followers. This is the case with Atenea and Eudres. Similarly, Circle U. stands out for being the second-generation European University with the highest number of followers and the content of its account is mainly based on retweets (58.3%). On the contrary, Ulysseus has a high proportion of its own tweets and replies yet only has 570 followers.
The image projected by the ten most followed accounts of the European consortia, according to the platform Abbrevia. me, is described as follows. Table 10. Description of the image projected by the 10 most followed accounts according to Abbrevia.me

Una Europa
Projects an image of an academic organisation committed to diversity, inclusion and excellence in higher education in Europe. Its tweets cover a wide range of topics, from calls for proposals and research opportunities to university-related news and events. It also focuses on topics such as project management, the quality of higher education and the regulation of joint degrees in Europe. Overall, its tweets reflect an active organisation committed to the continuous improvement of higher education in Europe.

Civica
It projects an image of an academic organisation committed to cooperation and dialogue between European universities. In general, it talks about issues related to research, higher education, diversity, inclusion and sustainability. It also shares information about events and opportunities for students and academics in the Civica alliance.

Civis
It projects an image of an educational organisation committed to promoting learning opportunities for students and academics across Europe. In general, it talks about issues related to higher education, research, gender equality and global challenges. It also promotes online and face-to-face programmes and courses for students and academics from Civis member universities.

ECIU
It projects an image of an organisation committed to European-level university collaboration and innovation in education, research and development. In general, it talks about projects and events related to university cooperation, research, innovation and education in Europe. It also shares news and retweets about events and projects of other organisations related to education and research in Europe.

AllianceYufe
It projects the image of being an official account of the European university alliance YUFE, sharing information and news related to the European university initiative and its activities. In general, it talks about issues related to higher education, research, international collaboration and diversity in the university community. It also shares information about events and opportunities for students and academics.

Eutopia
It projects the image of a university committed to research and international collaboration. In general, it talks about issues related to higher education, research, science, culture and diversity. It also shares information about events and opportunities for students and academics.

Circle U.
It projects the image of an organisation that focuses on higher education and research, with a focus on diversity, inclusion and female empowerment. Its tweets include information about events, initiatives and training opportunities on topics such as global health, climate change, democracy and interdisciplinary research. It also shares retweets from other universities and organisations that share its values and goals.

4EUPlusAlliance
It posts mainly about events, projects and opportunities related to higher education and cooperation between European universities. It also shares information about online courses and master's programmes on topics such as the environment, entrepreneurship and sustainable development. Overall, the account projects an image of commitment to education and international collaboration.

Charm Eight
It projects the image of an academic organisation committed to sustainability and gender equality. In general, it talks about issues related to responsible research and innovation, collaboration between European universities, inclusive education and citizen engagement. It also shares information about events and learning opportunities in these areas.

Arqus Alliance
It projects an image of an academic and multidisciplinary organisation that promotes collaboration between European universities. In general, it talks about joint master's programmes, research opportunities, events and activities related to higher education and European culture. It also focuses on issues such as linguistic and cultural diversity, gender equality and the promotion of open science.   As can be seen from the descriptions of the artificial intelligence platform, the ten most followed European University profiles on Twitter are committed to the EHEA, and they do so in their publications, not only in terms of academic offerings, but also by reporting on interesting calls for proposals, scientific dissemination, events, culture, cooperation and gender issues.
This aspect is also evidenced in the word clouds obtained through the program Nvivo using the content of their publications. From the analysis of the terms most used by the top ten European universities (Table 11), it can be seen that self-referentiality is the general trend among the consortia. In other words, these universities use Twitter to make themselves known, not only by including themselves in the content, but also by generating hashtags with their name for monitoring purposes. There are also numerous mentions of the accounts of the universities forming the consortium, as well as allusions to the fundamental elements already described in Table 10, such as allusions to their students, research, sustainability, the EHEA and the concept of university.

Discussion and conclusions
Based on the descriptive compilation of the presence of European Universities on social networks and the content analysis of their activity on Twitter as a preferred network, this paper has tried to deepen the institutional communication of a new subject of higher education, called to channel a large part of the mobility resources in Europe over the coming years. European Universities are born out of the need to increase the impact of institutional collaboration on citizens, for which communication is essential. For this reason, the presence of these alliances on social networks was firstly analysed (RQ1).
The data show that these platforms are a widely used medium for institutional communication and are almost always linked from the consortium's website. Twitter and Instagram are the most used platforms, making it possible to interpret that, on the one hand, priority is given to informative messages (Twitter) and, at the same time, use is made of a channel with a high penetration rate among the young population that forms the student body of these institutions (Instagram). The number of followers is extremely low for the communities they manage, and first-generation universities have a head start, with LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube acting as complementary networks. Spain leads all rankings, followed by France, Portugal, the Netherlands and Italy. Arqus Alliance, led by the University of Granada, and Eutopia, led by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, are the only ones that stand out on the five platforms evaluated.
With regard to the activity developed on Twitter as the preferred social network of these European University consortia (RQ2), our research shows a scarce use of the interaction possibilities of this social network. Moreo-Social networks are a common communication channel for European Universities, highlighting the use of Twitter and Instagram The use of the interaction possibilities of Twitter is scarce, and the strategic use of this platform is punctual ver, the descriptions could be much improved in terms of explaining the concept of the European University, its objectives or its members. First-generation alliances again show a clear superiority, visible in the number of followers. This figure does not reach 1,000 in most of the second-generation consortia.
As a third contribution, with regard to content, some alliances demonstrate professionalised work (RQ3), but in general the first-generation initiatives produce more tweets and, specifically, those with more followers. The majority of the sample sends less than one tweet per day, with European universities of French and Spanish origin breaking this trend the most. Furthermore, a third of the sample gives more quantitative importance to retweets than to their own messages, implying that these institutional profiles serve as a sounding board for messages posted by others. The original use of Twitter appears to be ad hoc, being limited to a few European universities, which seem to be conditioned by elements such as national origin or seniority.
Moreover, with regard to the image projected by the content (RQ3), it can be considered, according to the exploratory analysis of the ten most followed accounts, that European Universities are committed to the Higher Education Area (EHEA) in their publications, to which they make reference in various aspects ranging from the educational offer to the dissemination of research results or events. It can also be considered that all of them make a communicative effort to promote themselves among their wide and dispersed communities by resorting to self-referencing through the tools enabled by Twitter: self-mentioning and hashtags. This would explain the excessive use of retweets by most of the European consortia analysed, which are forced to give visibility to the different events and activities of the universities comprising the consortium, but at the same time create an image of a common project.
The findings show that these universities are not so much "European", but rather that the background of their coordinating university influences their institutional communication. Data from the Digital News Report illustrate the differences in the use of social networks by country (Newman et al., 2022). Spain stands out in the use of Twitter for both information and leisure purposes (32% of the population), followed by Italy and Sweden with 17%, and France and Portugal with 15%. However, reference is made to several countries where Twitter is residual, such as Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. This may establish a relationship between the number of Twitter followers of European Universities and the cultures of use of this social network in the different countries leading each consortium.
Twitter remains the social network most used by university institutions, which is consistent with previous literature (Ferrer-Serrano; Latorre-Martínez; Lozano-Blasco, 2020). The low interactivity on this platform is also consistent with previous studies (Kent, 2013;Moreno et al., 2015;Zerfass et al., 2021). According to the analysis of the number of followers and the volume of tweets, strategic planning and quality of content are important for achieving a better relationship with followers (García-García, 2018; Lund, 2019). However, comparative data between first-and second-generation consortia show that long-term work is also defined as fundamental in gaining and maintaining a community.
With regard to the corporate culture of the coordinating university, which as discussed above may be connected to the country of origin, previous research on the EPS has suggested that the articulation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) would have a greater reach in those countries with a long history of EU membership. This would help to understand why France and Spain are the most prominent in the field of European Universities, accompanied by other EU-15 member states, while Eastern European countries occupy a peripheral position.
A limitation of our work is that it does not consider the interrelationships generated by the communication flow of European Universities, as it does not analyse who is retweeted or how the alliances relate to each other and to other stakeholders. This study serves as a first approach to a recent phenomenon of the construction of supranational higher education entities, called to orchestrate the future of this field in Europe.
In a context of the survival of national communication spheres (Von-Nordheim et al., 2021), future research has the challenge of delving into the possible potential of this transnational communication, but also into the reservations that it may generate, for example, in terms of the extent to which local universities are involved in these initiatives. It would also be interesting to compare the results of the universities in such consortia with the European Universities themselves. These are still incipient projects, hence the need to investigate their impact in terms of awareness and involvement of members of the university community, especially young people, who are identified as a priority audience for the EU.
The funding dedicated to this initiative needs to be traceable in terms of communication in order to ensure the involvement of its stakeholders.