A while ago, in February to be precise, I wrote a post entitled “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears“, at the end of which I wondered “whether an article titled and tagged as this one is, especially when these terms appear in tempting conjunction with “European Parliament”, gets any bump in traffic?”. Well, since we’ve been in the mood for number crunching I went and checked.

Thanks for the traffic, Britney

And the answer is: since records began (as they say) “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears” is our “most read” page on this blog – homepage excepted – by a street. The page has been viewed over 3000 times, which is roughly six times the number of the next most popular page, the Team, and over seven times the score for the next real post. What’s more, it maintains a constant flow of readers, so, yes, some search terms are, well, timeless.

People are looking for sex and go away the moment they realise they’re not getting it

It amuses me to imagine the disappointment of hopeful teenage internauts* who find themselves confronted with my earnest musings on search engine optimisation. Actually, I don’t have to imagine; I can see the disappointment in the 94.95% “bounce rate” on this page, and the average 1.34 minutes people spend there (so, actually, some-one must be reading it!).

What do we conclude? Well, the obvious I suppose: people are looking for sex and go away the moment they realise they’re not getting it. (You didn’t need me to tell you that, perhaps?) Oh yes, and that if you want your comments section spammed by a world-full of internet sleazeballs, just publish a post entitled “Sex, Porn and Britney Spears”. Now I know why Tibo looked heavenwards when he saw what I’d done. But he found a good spam filter, so all’s well that ends well, right?

Anyway, what about our real top posts? Here are the top five “real posts” on our blog so far in 2009 (in reverse order, of course):

no. 5

“Moderation in all things“. My own best scorer (without cheating), with some thoughts about moderation v. censorship on Parliament’s website.

no. 4

“New technologies: keeping up without being killed in the attempt“. A “guest blogger” piece, this, by Jaume, a.k.a. The Director, about how to deal with unruly WebCom subordinates. A recent publication, so probably has the legs to move up the rankings.

no. 3

“The importance of being normal” by Manja. This one involves Manja meeting her friend and normal person, Ola-dele Kuku, and getting a bit of real-world perspective on what we call Europe.

no. 2

Are people looking for love as well as sex?

“P.S: I love you“. Eirini talks about meeting real people at the 2009 Open Day. (Actually, honesty dictates that I reveal that this one has a highish bounce rate too – are people looking for love as well as sex?)

no. 1

“Europe is nothing but a big bad wolf“. Eirini again, this time priming her readers for the European elections. Well done, Eirini! A few more people reading our blog and we might even have got turnout to go up…

And finally, quality…

Since we are believers in quality, not only quantity, a “special mention” here also for the post with the longest average time spent by readers reading it. This goes to Tibo, for a post (alternatively cri de coeur) called “Living in a world of meetings“. It’s good, so why not go and read it, but be sure to spend at least 4 minutes 42 seconds doing so, so you don’t depress his record-winning online stamina.

So there you have it. Totally scientific and statistically rigorous, of course. By the way, do you think I got enough dodgy search terms into this article to make the top five?

*****

PS The Irish said “Yes” to Lisbon today. Should I have blogged about that? Never mind, the EP reaction is on Parliament’s website (on a Saturday!!!), thanks to our friends in the press service. Besides, blogwise, there’s always our soon-to-be new friend Julien Frisch to do the heavy lifting (looking forward to meeting you, Julien). I keep checking for the inevitable post.

PPS and * English language readers may have enjoyed a great new word: “internaut”. Yes, the French have this great neologism for internet users. I has always amused me. Just thought I’d share that.

It's difficult to find new challenges after the elections... Photo by Koshyk on Flickr

And now? What’s next? After the tension of the election night (“Here are the first results! Tweeeeeeeeeeeet please! Asap!”), we’re coming in what I call a “post-electoral depression”. Nothing matters any more. Day-to-day work seems quite boring. What’s the aim of the articles we write, if not to increase the turnout in the elections?

On top of that, after having been in the “centre of the world” – or the “centre of Europe”, with hundreds of thousands of visits (i.e. readers) each day, nobody cares about us now. The stats are going down. We will become anonymous again on the web. No banner campaign, no Google adwords. Well, is that strange to be a normal citizen, waking up each morning for going to work instead of changing the world!

Retrospectively, overmotivation is probably dangerous. We should now wait five years until we can experience again an electoral campaign. For the time being, I will go on holidays. Just to forget a little bit the work, just to remind me that there are some wonderful things in the world which have nothing to do with my job. And when I will come back, I will be highly motivated for the next challenges. Because fortunately, we will find new goals, new projects, new deadlines … La vie est un éternel recommencement, en somme…

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”.

Another orange envelope on its way to the Netherlands (Pietro Naj-Oleari, 20-05-2009)

Each member of our team will be voting since there is always time to vote. Here at the EP headquarters we will on election night be as much waiting for the results to know how the “camembert“  will be divided as we will be waiting for the turn-out figures.

As an incentive for candidates to continue campaigning: one third of our staff has not made up their mind yet less than two weeks before the elections. What everybody does know, is whether they will be voting for a candidate in their home country or for a Belgian candidate. Remember, for European elections it is possible to vote in the EU-country of residence. Only three people are saving the honour of our unit by making a true European choice: they will be voting in Belgium. Well, actually only two people are saving our honour since one is voting in Belgium because his own government took away his voting rights!

In case you did not make up your mind yet, continue reading to find some tips and tricks to make your choice.

Firstly, if you still barely know what the European Parliament is made of, watch this video explaining the groups with a chocolate cake. It seems the British conservatives taste deliciously! Bear in mind that many parties running for election are not represented in the current Parliament. You can check out the voting lists in your country  to know all participating parties in these elections. You will find the lists on the right site on your county page, once they’ve become available.

You may have a cross-party issue on your mind you want to fulfil. You may want to vote for a candidate that will look after gay rights, or you may want to vote for a MEP with special attention for disabled people. Just contact the spokesperson of the party of your choice and ask if there is a candidate on their list looking after your specific interests.

Finally, many candidates are using this year the social media for their campaign. The candidate you want to know more about may have put a video on YouTube, a page on Facebook or keep a blog and in any case (s)he will have a website. If you were able to find this blog, you certainly will be able to find more info online to make up your mind! 

Most citizens will be mainly interested in knowing how their party did. But what if in the next elections turn-out figures would be as exciting to them as they are to us…. Suppose we would slightly change the rules for the elections in 2014 and let the citizens of each EU-country really get the politicians they deserve…. by number.

We could link the number of MEPs per country to the turn-out in the country (we would need to find a solution for Belgium where voting is compulsory). If citizens would know they could be poorly represented – not necessarily by ideology but by nationality - in case they would not show up, they may be very keen on voting to gain an extra MEP or two for their country. How exciting the elections would be in that case ……

No, I am not only dreaming and actually did last week a down-to-earth thing and casted my vote. So one more orange envelope is on its way to The Hague… And no, I will not tell here what lady I voted for.

Newspapers love bad news (Photo: from Flickr by Bec)

What’s the one thing people know about the European elections due to be held between 4 and 7 June? Yes, you got it: that there is likely to be a record level of abstention, with as little as 40% of eligible voters bothering to cast their votes. How do you know that? Because that’s ALL you’re ever told about these elections by the media… Any media in any country as far as I can tell. Am I alone in thinking that if the public were sometimes actually told something ELSE about these elections they might actually sit up and take an interest? As it is, the principal message that anyone is receiving is that these are elections not to be bothered with – or at least that nobody else will be bothered with, which comes to the same thing.

(I thought about linking here, but there’s little point – just find pretty much any article on the European elections.)

It’s sad, and it’s a great disservice to the public. The European Parliament decides things that are important, including to real people. It will be elected, and it will continue to exercise its considerable powers, whatever the turnout. So constantly telling people in effect there’s no point in voting in the election is a bit like telling them there’s no point in democracy, that it’s not worth having a say in deciding who governs you, just live with whatever you get, who cares? 

Are you telling me that where there is power and money in spades, and people elected to dispense them, there are no stories to tell?

However, something tells me that people who read this would probably number themselves in the enlightened 40%, so this is not about why people should vote, but about why the reporting of the elections in mainstream media seems to focus on the turnout question at the expense of pretty much all other questions.

Too much like hard work…

Hypothesis 1: it’s laziness. Europe is complicated, and most political journalists live in comfort zones of national politics where the issues, processes and personalities are familiar to them and to their audience. They can use shorthand, frame their stories in terms of instantly recognisable conflicts and players. EU elections involve a bit of research, a bit of explanation, some departure form the home ground of domestic politics. So, find a nice easy story (turnout) or, if pushed, talk about the elections as if they were national elections (which is another way of divorcing them from their true meaning and significance).

Looking for an angle?

Hypothesis 2: it’s hard to find a good story. Am I being too harsh? Perhaps the complexity of EU politics makes it difficult for the most sincere and hard-working of journalists to find stories which will engage their audiences. No point in pretending otherwise, EU politics provide relatively little of the kind of conflict – guys in white hats, guys in black hats, last minute showdowns, nail-biting parliamentary votes (actually there are some of them), soaring rhetoric across the dispatch box (UK reference, sorry), careers destroyed by improbable indiscretions – which is the stuff of day-to-day political reporting. All true, but, come on, are you telling me that where there is power and money in spades, and people elected to dispense them, there are no stories to tell?  

Feeding frenzy

Hypothesis 3: the pack instinct. Let’s face it, there is nothing the media (and, yes, media audiences) like better than to kick a man when he’s down. Yes, turnout is a worry, so let’s make it all the elections are about – see how much worse it can be made, because there’s nothing like the faux shock-horror of picking over the bones afterwards, tut-tutting and pontificating over the decline of democracy or the “irrelevance” of Europe to normal people (the familiar lie). On the upside, perhaps we finally have a genuine pan-European political phenomenon here..!

Malice aforethought?

Hypothesis 4: the whole point is to talk turnout down. Sure, there’s no doubt that some media coverage actually aims to reduce turnout, possibly in the hope that high abstention rates will delegitimise the whole EU system. This is a motive which is at times actually quite explicit. But, hang on, the European Parliament, as I observed earlier, will be elected and will exercise its powers. Surely the best way to oppose the EU system as such, if that is what you want, is by electing people who will do the opposing from within? Alternative scenario: low turnout could mean an unrepresentative vote, allowing protest, fringe and extremist parties to gain access to the European Parliament (this is gradually becoming a secondary story tacked on to the turnout reporting), but it is hard to see why the mainstream media would pursue this agenda, unless it be for the Schadenfreude alluded to above.

If politicians seemingly can’t be bothered to campaign on the European elections, why should journalists make the effort to go beyond the turnout story to examine the issues?

Failure of politicians

Hypothesis 5: don’t blame the messenger. Just as political journalists are mostly locked into their national systems, so (usually) are politicians. Where I live, in Belgium, you would be hard pushed to know there is a European election coming up (yes, I did say “in Belgium”), as the letter box bulges with election literature relating exclusively to Brussels regional elections due on the same day as the European elections. One is tempted to wonder whether, if the politicians seemingly can’t be bothered to campaign on the European elections, why should journalists make the effort to go beyond the turnout story to examine the issues? (Except for the usual reason that journalists should always challenge politicians’ assumptions.) I suspect the story is not dissimilar elsewhere, even where there is no coincidental election and voting is not compulsory – are political parties campaigning a European election on European issues? (Or are the politicians just caught in the same trap as journalists – hyopotheses 1 and 2 above?)

It’s true

Hypothesis 6: turnout is a worry and probably will not be high. OK, this is a valid story about the EU election. But all I’m saying is that it is not the ONLY one.

But wouldn’t it be great to prove the commentariat wrong!

So there you have it, some possible reasons why so much reporting of the European election focuses exclusively on one aspect. (Pace the many valiant souls who know this thing for what it is and struggle daily with home news-desks to tell the real story – I salute you!) Maybe you have other suggestions as to why the real story is so difficult to get out?

I just can’t help wondering if the worm may actually start to turn, if people will maybe start to wonder whether the wool isn’t being pulled over their eyes, whether there is actually something decidedly fishy about being told day after day not to exercise one of their most fundamental democratic rights?

The extraordinary growth we are seeing in traffic to the EP website and the lively interaction on Facebook and other social media suggest that there are plenty of people out there who are taking an interest.

But up against the power of the media, we are but a paltry affair in the European Parliament’s communication service. Our elections communication campaign – duly denounced as scandalously expensive – is ridiculously small, less than a drop in the ocean, a David-against-Goliath scenario. But there should be no apologies for the fact that at least some-one is trying to tell people about what these elections really mean, and encourage them to vote – however they want to vote – and not allow themselves to be sweet-talked out of one of their most important rights.

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(Interesting, and doubtless more professional, musings on the European elections and the media in this recent publication by Mostra (a Brussels communication agency – worth a look)