Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP — a planned agreement about free trade between the European Union and USA. Its supporters presume that the agreement will cause the multilateral economic growth, while those in opposition state that it will cause the increase in large corporations power and will complicate the governmental market regulation for the sake of the entire country. The Partnership was thought to be enacted in 2014, but it was suspended until 2015. On January 7^th , 2015,  the European Commission  have presented its negotiation texts to the public. The European Commission have started public consultations on a limited number of questions and published the short review of this document in January, 2015.

A research made by the Prognosis Media analytical center have shown the negative opinion of German social media users towards the TTIP initiative:

Research parameters

Research period: November 06 – 11,  2015.

Analyzed: 41 539 messages by 20 850 authors.

Sources:

• Social networks: 97,8%
• Mass-media: 1,6%

Social networks:

• Twitter: 61,3%
• Facebook: 35,1%
• Other: 3,7%

Mass-media (percentage of the total media amount, including comments):

• derstandard.at: 4,1%
• welt.de: 3,6%
• wallstreet-online.de: 1,8%
• dw.de: 1,6%
• lr-online.de: 1,4%
• Other: 87,5%

Languages:

• German: 49,5%
• English: 23,9%
• Other: 26,6%

Geography:

• Germany: 45,6%
• Great Britain: 9,7%
• Spain: 6,7%
• USA: 6,4%
• Austria: 6,4%
• Other: 24,2%

Age:

• Less than 18: 0,2%
• 18-24: 1,6%
• 25-34: 15,9%
• 35-44: 17,3%
• 45-54: 34,3%
• 55 and older: 30,8%

Commentary

A peak message dynamics could be seen at November 9-10^th, total amount of messages in those two days is 1,5-2 times higher than the weekly average.

High activity during this period can be explained by the event that took place in Berlin on the November 10^th : near the Brandenburg gate, the president of the European Parliament M. Shulz accepted the petition from the representatives of European civil initiative «Stop TTIP» with 3,5 mln. Signatires against the agreement. The EU ignored the initiative before, but it was accepted on November 10^th. This fact had mobilized the most active supporters of the initiative to start the activity in social networks. The messages are mostly negative towards the TTIP – more than 80% messages are against the agreement. At November 11^th, however, the amount of messages subsided to the amounts of November 6^th – 9^th.

Data of research made by Prognosis Media correlates (but is not the same as) with the public opinion survey in Germany, which was conducted by one of the oldest German research centers – Emnid. This center was measuring the opinions of German citizens towards the supranational arbitration courts, that will play the key role in protecting the interests of the foreign investors and proprietors in the nation-state territories after the agreement. A survey by  Emnid  was finished at November 8^th  by the order of Campact und Foodwatch and yielded the following results: about 57% stated against the arbitration courts, 19% support the idea of investitions protection, 12% are uncertain.

Other studies

08.11.2015. A survey by the market research center GfK  959 German citizens about their opinion on the creation of interstate arbitration courts within the TTIP program, that will protect the rights of foreign investors should they come in conflict with the government of the accepting countries: 26,5% Germans spoke against the idea, 19% – supported it, 54,4% said : «I don’t know».

11.11.2015. A survey by the Social Politivs research center of the University of Bremen (Forschungszentrum Ungleichheit und Sozialpolitik (Socium) der Universität Bremen) of members of the mass protest in Berlin against the TTIP: 61% of the interviewed think that the agreement will make the government control over the power of large corporations more difficult and 53% state that the agreement will deal a blow to the democratic principles.

The most characteristic messages in social media

• Wirtschaft – Freihandelsabkommen: Angst vor TTIP – viele wissen aber gar nicht, warum
• Martin Loehr -Der Kampf gegen TTIP. Dort stehen GRÜNE, SPD, NGOs, AfD, AntiFa, PEGIDA, PEGADA
• Horst Lüning – Prinzipiell sehe ich Freihandel auch als etwas Positives. Globalisierung sorgt letztlich für maximale Arbeitsteilung, was wiederum zu maximaler Effizienz und infolgedessen maximaler Produktivität führt
• Liese Müller – von TTIP keine nennenswerten Wachstums- und Beschäftigungseffekte zu erwarten sind
• Jörg Brosche – 3 Millionen haben gegen Ttip unterschrieben. Und ? Hat es was gebracht?
• Bo – Wer sind die Gegner von #TTIP und #CETA: gebildet, politisch links und nicht mehr die jüngsten
• Sieglinde Landmann – Interessen durch unsere Politiker, Massenüberwachung durch „Freunde“, Vorratsdatenspeicherung, TTIP und Medien, die nicht Volkes Meinung wiedergeben? Reicht‘s Ihnen auch?
• Liese Müller – von TTIP keine nennenswerten Wachstums- und Beschäftigungseffekte zu erwarten sind
• linkspazi – #TTIP ist der letzte Schritt zur Privatisierung der Regierungen
• Michael Arnold – Die Neuversklavung der Völker des Westens findet auf verschiedenen Ebenen statt.