3. General interest
Students and
young people
Organisations
and campaigns
Journalists
Think-tanks
NGOs
Leaders
Tech-savvy
Political
Professional
Consultancies
Researchers
Staff
General
interest
Students and
young people
Brings together
audiences from
all platforms
Different platforms, different audiences
4. Commissioners and Spokespersons Get Social
20102010 20142014
22 EU Commissioners
25 Spokespersons
7 EU Commissioners
11 Spokespersons
Average Daily
potential reach :
128 million users
7 Commissioners 10 Commissioners
Total number of
fans: 93K
Social media can play a powerful role in this emerging digital diplomacy by promoting the EU’s core values of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and international cooperation. We have therefore made a strategic choice to use social media as a diplomatic digital tool for external communication, dialogue and political engagement
We work in a 24-hour news cycle and foreign policy crosses all time zones. Things can happen anywhere in the world at any time and Twitter is a really effective way to react. Twitter provides a fast and easy way to send out messages and react to events. A recent example of this was the nuclear deal with Iran which was brokered in Geneva. As you know Catherine Ashton has been leading the talks between the international community and Iran. At 02.55 in the morning her Spokesperson Michael Mann (@EUHighRepSpox), broke the news to the world on Twitter and his tweet “#EU High Rep #Ashton: We have reached agreement between E3+3 and Iran” was retweeted several hundred times.
We are also increasingly using “Storify” as it brings together many different elements, Twitter, Facebook and online news agencies. We used it for the recent UN General Assembly week and the Eastern Partnership Summit.
Social Media presence
At present we have over 60 Delegations using social media platforms of some form for communication, engagement and public diplomacy. Having a strategy also allows us to have a more coordinated approach to content and to run joint campaigns.
Citizen outreach
EU delegations (in non-EU countries) and EU representations (in EU countries) open to interaction with local populations to answer their questions about the EU, with a focus on practical questions (travelling across the EU, working and studying in the EU….)
Consular services
Since 2002, every EU citizen is entitled to help from any other EU Member State’s embassy / consulate, under the same conditions as their nationals. This extended consular protection is not known by many Europeans. This information is beign used to better convey the idea that the EU is developing innovative approaches to consular protection and visa policies (since 2010, there is a common visa policy).
Reaching out to these travellers on relevant online travel communities (Tripadvisor, Lonely Planet) is an original and efffective way to sell the EU to these audiences and demonstrate its concrete benefits…and this is somenthing that we are exploring right now
EU community building abroad
The reality of expatriation. EU delegations / representations facilitate and encourage the social life of Europeans by creating online communities for them to interact and share, via Facebook pages or dedicated social networking platforms such as Ning or Yammer.
These expatriates become brand ambassadors for the EU in their guest country, acting as multipliers for the diplomatic efforts engaged by the EEAS and other EU institutions.
Crisis communications
The EEAS, through its delegations / representations, act as an aggregator of crisis-related information in the wake or aftermath of major crises, making sure that EU citizen are properly informed, in particular for those who do not have a national representation in their country of residence and who struggle with understanding the safety instructions provided in a language they do not master.
___
Reaction to tweets
The EU Delegation to China’s own two weibo on platforms Sina and Tencent have about 500,000 followers. Other EU Delegations that are making active use of Twitter and other social media include Washington (accounts of the Delegation and its Head, Joao Vale de Almeida), Lebanon and the Delegation to the UN.
During and after the negotiations of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 I suppose that Klemens Wenzel von Metternich communicated with Viscount Castlereagh and Tsar Alexander I orally and via documents printed on paper possibly sealed with wax stamps. When world leaders started communicating via phone, did political scientists start talking about “telephonic diplomacy?” The question here is rhetoric. David Cameron uses Twitter, so does newly appointed Italian PM Matteo Renzi and so … is this digital diplomacy? Obviously not.
The EU has already show that we care about sm…that we are using it to express, engage, liste…Social media is now a place where people organise, protest, petition and demand change, and we have to be able to respond to this – to listen and to react. Over the coming months, we can expect people to use their voice to express their views on all the issues that are going to be on the table for the election, and that are pressing right now in Member States – from Ukraine, to LGBT rights, to GMOs. The upcoming TTIP negotiations are also going to be a big topic. The better we listen, the quicker we can react, share information and be as open as we can.
Setting up the agenda
