I suppose it’s the price of success, but we are starting to wonder how to deal with a new phenomenon: the “do something on Facebook” syndrome.

It’s great that people have noticed what we do and believe in its effectiveness as a tool of communication for the European Parliament. We could hardly say otherwise: we are still very much evangelising for the use of social media – and social media techniques – both inside the Parliament and beyond. But we are starting to see a new trend which may point to a future where we may be soft-pedalling a little more.

A Twitpic from plenary? Actress Saadet Işıl Aksoy in Parliament in Novmber 2009

It goes something like this. A colleague somewhere in the Parliament, responsible perhaps for organising an event, starts to muse over how to get people to take an interest, turn up maybe. It crosses the colleague’s mind that some quite interesting things are going on using social media… the words “online buzz” spring to mind… And to most, that means Parliament’s Facebook page.

Let’s face it, parliamentary life is not a constant roller-coaster of thrills ‘n’ spills. Not every subject is “sexy”. (By the way, I hate the use of that word in this context – kindly hit me if ever you catch me saying it.) This is how it should be. Parliamentarians deal with important subjects, they have in-depth debates, they examine legal niceties, meet experts in arcane fields. Speaking as a citizen, I am glad someone is doing serious, unsexy (ugh!) work on my behalf. Not every day or debate even in that beacon of “exciting” parliamenarianism, the House of Commons, is Prime Minister’s Question Time. Perhaps we should try to relax a little about a high proportion of meetings being rather dry. It could even be a badge of honour.

All this to say that when the call comes to “do something on Facebook” to whip up a frenzy of public excitement over an interparliamentary conference on the harmonisation of provisions governing waste water standards, our collective heart tends to sink into our boots.

Important point: waste water standards and their harmonisation matter hugely. (The example is, by the way, made up.) Thank goodness someone is doing this work. But it is not reasonable to expect the Facebook community to be galvanised by this. What often does not seem to be understood by our colleagues is that Facebook and similar social media platforms are media to be managed. Some things work well, others less so. It’s our job to know this and act accordingly. If we want these media to work well for us in the long term, they have to be nurtured, our “brand” protected, our “audience” treated with respect . They are not a magic wand to be waved over every miscellaneous parliamentary activity in a random bid for popularity.

There are intermediate cases. Sometimes we have to tell colleagues that though their subject is great, something on which our Facebookers will be highly motivated, this interest will be difficult to transfer to the event itself. A parliamentary hearing is, well, a parliamentary hearing. People sit in seats and talk. There is a limit to which even the most interesting subject can make the event itself a social media focus. If the purpose of doing something on Facebook is to promote the event itself, we get into a raw material issue.

One of the questions I answer most often is what a hashtag is. At least people are asking.

There is maybe a wider question here: how much should parliamentary events themselves by “spiced up” to make them more sellable? This is not just a social media question of course and we all know the media tail has been wagging the political dog for time immemorial, but the question is posed anew, and in a slightly different way when it comes to social media.

Meanwhile though, rather than us “doing something” on Facebook, a more promising route in terms of social media buzz around parliamentary events is to look at Twitter. This actually has less to do with us and much more to with with MEPs themselves. If they are, say, twittering from events, offering live observations on proceedings and reacting to fellow twitterers outside, perhaps a buzz will indeed be created. I wonder. Some would doubtless disapprove of a roomful of MEPs all engaged in possibly distracting parallel conversations online, while others, on the opposite side, will not fail to point that an open wifi network in parliamentary meeting rooms would help… (I believe it will come, one day!) However, the day when programmes for parliamentary hearings systematically include an event hashtag may not be far off. Whether there is yet a critical mass for this idea to take off is debatable, but things move quickly in this field. One of the questions I answer most often is what a hashtag is. But at least people are asking.

So maybe next time we are asked to “do something” on Facebook for an event, we will ask the organisers what their hashtag is. Then we might be in business.