So now it’s all over… Nearly six weeks with intensive online election campaigns. Last week nearly 162 million European voters went to the polls to elect their 736 representatives in the European Parliament. Even though the 43, 2 % turnout is the lowest ever, it was way better than most analyst had expected before the elections.
Majority of MEP´s unfamiliar with social media
According to a survey (carried for euobserver.com), the European elections have not resulted in a boost in the MEP´s use of social media tools. Only 33 % of all MEP´s use social media networks extensively, while 29 % do not use them at all. Furthermore 62 % have never heard of Twitter and have no plans to use it, and only 25 % are blogging extensively.
These numbers are quite surprising, since average Europeans spend more than 9 hours a week on the internet and 66, 8 % are connected to social networks. The survey concludes that the large majority of MEP´s “do not take full advantage” of social media tools as a mean to engage with voters and “drive them to their websites”.
From “digital immigrants” to “digital natives”
In our unit we have worked intensively with social media up to the European elections. We have tried to engage and inform voters and “drive them to our website”. Our social media campaign has been centred around a total of 8 online platforms: The European Parliament website, the special election website, EuroparlTV, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.
Like my Bulgarian colleague, I’ve never been an IT-nerd (!), at best a “digital asylum-seeker”. Ok, I have a Facebook profile, but before the election campaign started I mainly used it to check my emails. It has therefore been an educational experience to participate in the online election campaign, where we have tried to act like “digital natives” – meaning twitting, uploading videos on YouTube, moderating comments on the election website, post election updates on Facebook…
And the best thing about it all is that our campaign seems to have been very successful! In less than seven weeks we have gotten more than 50.000 friends on our Facebook page, over 105.000 visits on our MySpace page, 283.000 views on our most popular election video on our YouTube channel and hundreds of comments on our interactive election website.
All in all a very exciting experience. We are in contact with “real people” who can comment and react directly on what’s going on in the Parliament. We’re trying to make the Parliament more visible, especially for younger people. Looking forward to become a “digital native”.
Because of social media we learn more about friendship and communication they awake us to study computer technology.
Thatz a great chart! Good to see how social media is used in political campaigns
It was great to witness the full-scale on-line effort to leverage voters.
Will there by any sort of further analysis?
Unfortunately I have to agree with you, many politicians still don’t acknowledge the power of social media. It would have been easy for them to try a real time search engine and see what are people saying about them right now and could have fixed their problem in no time. Social media was, is and is getting even more important in all aspects of life.
Monika Lorincz
monika at surchur.com
http://surchur.com/
Blog: http://blog.surchur.com/
Twitter: @surchur
“Learning to cope with social media” – Euro Parliament perspective feat @SilkCharm & my chart :) http://twurl.nl/hzjf5o fr HK airport
Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media http://ff.im/-3T32f
Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media http://bit.ly/XNMZ9
Latest: Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media: Our social media campaign has been centre.. http://tinyurl.com/lch4cw
Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media http://is.gd/Z0l1
Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media http://bit.ly/6NXPA
Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media http://bit.ly/xW0zs
Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media: Our social media campaign has been centred around a tota.. http://tinyurl.com/lch4cw
Interesting: Writing for (y)EU | Learning to cope with social media http://is.gd/Z0l1
You experimented and tried, to your credit, and I think that you can be proud of what you did, although weird videos and other gimmicks should not escape assessment.
It would be interesting to see more pondered analysis of strengths and weaknesses, when you get that far.
Outside your remit is what to do to make the European elections a real choice for EU citizens, but perhaps the feedback you got contains some suggestions(?)
It would indeed be great if the Parliament – and other institutions – would learn from the experiences of this campaign, using it also in the post-electoral period.
Too often, such innovations get lost in the midst as soon as the big storm is over.