As citizens are increasingly discussing and sharing content online, we decided to take a look with the European Centre for Public Affairs at digital discussion and debate in the weeks leading up to the European elections. Covering English, French, German, Greek and Polish language, we asked the following questions: Was there an EU debate or were conversations limited to national politics? What were the most popular themes and how did the rankings compare? Did online “buzz” translate into votes at the ballot box? We also examined the digital footprint of an MEP using social networks to see how effectively he communicated with voters. And we purposely chose an online seminar format to do share the results with a wider group.

1. Webinar
European elections 09:
Social media insights

2. Agenda
What is social media for citizens and what are the
01 political consequences?
Online political debates: a lack of European digital
02 public space
03 MEP 2.0: what shall be in a name?
04 So what can we do? Best practice and next steps

3. 01 What is social media for
citizens and what are the
political consequences?

4. Citizens talking to other citizens through diverse « social »
web tools

5. New ways of sharing and expressing public opinions…
… with more and more importance of peer-to-peer recommendation
… but a few opinion formers who are over-represented in terms of share of voice

6. Social media: a growth that impacts every EU citizen
• Social Media is experiencing rapid global growth and is now a key part of
consumers’ daily media habits, taking time spent away from traditional media
• New ways to leverage opinions and to influence like TV did before.
Sources: eMarketer; EIAA / Comscore (Europe)

7. 02 Online political debates: a
lack of European digital
public space

8. A growing interest limited to a short period of time (2
months before the elections)
• German citizens definitely more looking for
information than French-speaking and
English-speaking ones
• One key news article seem to drive
attention:" Why should you vote?”

9. Twitter: flavor of the month or new political trend?
A missed weapon
Still, MEPs trail behind their American counterparts. Of
the 535 members of Congress, 116 are already using
Twitter (22%). On this side of the Atlantic, only 27 MEPs
use Twitter: just 3.5% of the 785 members of the
European Parliament.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/eu-elections/twittering-meps-
fail-embrace-internet-craze/article-182511

10. Microblogging is a new way of communicating all over
Europe: 140 signs to leverage word-of-mouth
http://www.tweetelect09.eu/country/Greece
http://www.tweetelect09.eu/
Search word: ‘twitter’ in Poland Source: Google Trends

11. A dedicated interactive platform that was only used as a
push of information

12. Problem is that this kind of tool was not perfectly
used by politicians: the @ RT effect
A push of information, but
rare conversations that
could improve the
word-of-mouth: a missed
opportunity

13. Facebook: amazing CRM that was just used as a static
promotion tool
“The point is not to have a million people. The point is to be able
to chop up that million-person list into manageable chunks and
organize them.”
-Joe Rospars, Obama’s campaign’s new-media director

14. Few people engaged on main social networks like Facebook on
European elections groups and very few interactions

15. Conclusion: The European debate did not really exist
Conversations and discussions, when they occur, are :
- on spaces such as personal or mainstream blogs, news…
- limited and restricted to a national / local scope
- driven by national parties
- polluted by populists and “affairs”

16. European elections #1: A local focus
• Discussions about European issues seem to be more oriented
around local questions and seem to follow national issues
• English is the communication language, but it is suprising that
the volume is not so much bigger than French

17. Source: BlogPulse
Comparaison between Polish and French blogospheres
On more direct European topics like « Treaty of Lisbon », it seems like
there’s a stronger connection between national contexts
A community of interests but no bridge

18. • Topics are the same in the different countries but they experience different
share of voices, depending on the national context.
• No direct link is made between the issues. They are discussed on a national
scope.
France European level

19. France UK
• The various EP groups are perceived in a very different proportion, in the UK
blogosphere and in the French one. It depends on the local context and on
how national parties are already present. Nonetheless, EGP did an
astonishing job in France, as it changed the political ecosystem in French
social media
• Local parties & politicians are true conversation and attention filters, the
European debate is first a national one

20. European elections #2:
national parties & politicians as true conversation filters
France: UMP, Jean Sarkozy
Czech Republic: crisis at stake
• Political agenda is still mainly driven by national organisations

21. European elections #3:
each EP group has a very specific semantics, and then a territory
ID GU/NGL PSE
Les Verts ADLE UMP
• Because their territories are very different, no true & visible lign of
political opposition emerged

22. European elections #4: populist and « affairs » pollute this
European debate
• Buzz did not focus on rational debates but on emotional disputes
• The traditional media was a true source of buzz (even negative) in social media
Wikio top videos: Cohn-Bendit insulted by Bayrou was at the heart of discussion 2 days before the elections

23. 03 MEP 2.0: what shall be in a
name?

24. Alexander Alvaro, MEP 2.0

25. An MEP with high online engagement

26. Very few backlings
1http://www.flensburg.julis.de/index.php?id=
3784
2http://twitter.com/JuLi_Man
3http://www.facebook.com/pages/JuLiman/19
4261775595
4http://www.fdp-meinerzhagen.de/
5http://www.julis-potsdam.de/
6http://www.fdp-mannheim.de/
7http://www.fdp-luedenscheid.de/
• MEP Alvaro now occupies the social media, but needs to 8http://www.fdp-
engage more deeply in the conversations bw.de/regional/home.php?kvid=Mannheim
9http://www.liberale.de/webcom/show_article
.php?wc_c=460.....
10http://www.fdp.de/webcom/show_article.p
hp?wc_c=460&wc_i.....
11http://julis.potsdam-
liberal.de/inhalte/grundsatzprogra.....
12http://julis.potsdam-
liberal.de/inhalte/grundsatzprogra.....

27. The difference with politicians 2.0 and active citizen bloggers:
leveraging word-of-mouth thanks to deeper conversation
Benoit Hamon Samuel Authueil
PSE Citizen
Shorter conversation,
so a smaller Deeper conversation,
word-of-mouth so deeper impact
in diverse communities

28. 04 So what can we do?
Best practice and next steps

29. Barack Obama: towards reputation democracy
Obama recognised that the young
influential vote was not reachable
through a TV spot bombardment
Social media raised awareness and
drove engagement:
- Presence in 15 social networks
- 5 million ‘Friends’
- 3 million online donors
Once elected, Obama reduced activity
and received a negative reaction,
demonstrating the need to maintain
relationships with consumers who
have invested time into your brand
The Obama campaign delivered a continuous conversation with potential voters. Social Media
connected with a young audience using social networks, blogging and video sharing applications

30. Europe Ecologie – EuropeanGreens.eu
• A campaign that started last October
• Simple movement focusing on crisis solutions
• A centralization on a single platform (netvibes) of all the
various declarations and ideas
• A mix of tactic buzz (like lipdub) in which the politicians
played themselves the game and embodied the political
thoughts in the same storyline: voting can change
things
• A multichannel approach to leverage word-of-mouth
thanks to diverse interaction opportunities
• More than 1000+ meetings organised thanks to social
media but happening « in real life »
Europe Ecologie as a hub of conversation, moments and
transformation into what seems to be a concrete
political action

31. ALDE Civil Liberties Campaign: offline & online activations
hand in hand
• A civil liberties logo and webpage was designed. Members of the ALDE group were
encouraged to post contents. Concurrently, a civil liberties blog was developed, launched by
campaign leader Alexander Alvaro MEP using Facebook and Twitter to encourage civil
liberties activitists and supporters to share content and ultimately build a European civil
liberties movement.
• Journalists, NGOs and MEPs received an invitation by e-mail alert, intended to be read on
Blackberries and other personal devices, with a warning that the message may be read and
recorded according to current data retention laws if routed via the US.
• Campaign activation items were designed to make the campaign real and relevant to
people’s lives. A powerful short film on freedom of speech and anti-discrimination was
produced, based on the well-known holocaust poem “First they came for.. ” And posted on
YouTube. The poem was also produced in the form of a fridge magnet with topical subjects
added to enable people to make their own modern day versions of the poem.
• The first European Civil Liberties Day was inaugurated on 15 April by ALDE President Graham
Watson in the presence of over 100 members of the ALDE group, other MEPs, journalists and
NGOs.50 influential bloggers on the theme of Civil Liberties were also contacted.
• In total, a selection of 400 journalists and 150 NGOs from all 27 EU Member States were
informed about the campaign and invited to the European Civil Liberties Day. A petition
supporting an annual European Civil Liberties Day was launched on the blog. Over 23,000
contacts on Twitter have been registered, over 550 friends have joined the civil liberties
cause on Facebook and the ALDE civil liberties video against discrimination is provoking
intense interest on YouTube.

32. So what’s next?
• The record low turnout and low conversation level in
European social media does not mean that there’s no
community of interest online
• Blogs and social media were not fully exploited and
leveraged (only European Greens engaged some of them
into the political debate)
• Language is a limit that can not really improve the
European political debate: why not a European platform
centralizing diverse points of views that are happening
online and moderated by citizens in diverse languages?