Posts filed under ‘EP Digital Trends Study’
21% of MEPs use twitter – according to us and someone else
- Image via Wikipedia
Counting the number of MEPs that use online tools to communicate is not a bad way to start your company’s blog and attract traffic. We should know as our post that claimed that 11% of MEPs blog is still one of our most visited posts to this day. E-marketing newcomers Digimahti have followed our lead and list 115 157 tweeting MEPs. Not an insignificant number I am sure you’ll agree.
At 21% of the total members of Parliament, it’s exactly the same percentage that our MEP digital survey suggested used Twitter when we polled them in May this year! Digimahti of course notes that ‘using’ Twitter and having a Twitter account are very different. Our digital survey suggested that only 13% use it ‘regularly’, while 8% use it ‘occasionally’.
We’ll be looking to run our digital survey again next year with the new Parliament to see if that number improves.
James
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=62352d9d-d0ed-4d67-acf2-f5825bae2567)
From Rome to Tehran: democracy goes online
In one of our last posts we helped you understanding the apparently complicated Italian political scenario (we hope we succeeded). Now, your burning passion for the Peninsula’s politics will find other tools to better follow what happens in the ‘boot’.
A brand new web site to track down Italian MPs’ activities in the national parliament was launched yesterday. The web site has been created by a non-profit organization (Openopolis) which already launched in the past two initiatives, one to identify your political positioning by answering a set of questions on different topics and the other one to provide a wide range of information on politicians.
The new portal will help discovering, for example, that MP Antonio Caglione (Partito Democratico), is at the bottom of the attendance rate list (only 11.33% of sessions attended) and Furio Colombo (PD again) is the most rebellious MP, voting 394 times against the indications of his party. Berlusconi’s MPs are the most reliable in terms of presence and 16 of them are above the 99% threshold.
As you know this is not the first tool of this kind that was launched in a European country and it just show how the Internet is becoming an increasingly used tool by both politicians – FH digital survey docet – and voters or the society as a whole, all over Europe. People need and want the information that traditional media is not able to provide: a few minutes after the launch of the web site, visitors started receiving messages saying that the server was slowed down because of the massive traffic.
Digital democracy or e-democracy is not the future anymore, it is the present. An example? The protests in Tehran: with the government obscuring the telecom network, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube compensate the spread out of information and someone already defined this ‘ the first digital revolution’.
Simone
Tipping Over
A while ago tipping points were all the rage. Malcolm Gladwell’s book had captured the public imagination and points were to be seen tipping all over the place. I was reminded of this when I saw in our recent survey that 24% of MEPs write a blog. My first reaction was, is that all? Here is an ideal way of reaching out to the European citizen, particularly the young, the majority of whom are not going to bother voting in the forthcoming election. Here is a way of personalizing the seemingly impersonal European Parliament and of bridging the democratic deficit. Why would an MEP not do a blog?
I suspect the answer to this is more apathy than antipathy, but I also expect the elections to be a digital tipping point. The world of politics was galvanized by Obama’s use of social media in his winning campaign and many of the new MEPs will have used similar techniques as they sought election. They will understand the technology, appreciate its ease of use, and be comfortably in the posting rhythm. Politicians are herd animals at heart and it won’t take long for an MEP not blogging (or tweeting) to be considered a digi-dinosaur. And nobody would want that.
Nick A
65% of MEPs consult Wikipedia at least twice a week. So what?
In our recent survey of the online habits of Members of the European Parliament there were a number of statistics that stood out. None more than the fact that 65% of MEPs consult Wikipedia at least twice a week for legislative work. Reactions from readers to this particular stat varied from “LOL” through to “scary”.Yet the more grounded amongst you simply asked “so what?”
This post seeks to provide some initial answers to this question from the narrow viewpoint of someone conducting public affairs in Brussels. Below I have set out three conclusions focused on the “so what” from our survey results for those seeking to inform MEPs (i.e. public affairs practitioners/lobbyists).
So what for digital public affairs in Brussels?
- Digital tools are a must for conducting effective Brussels public affairs
Since the start of this blog nearly 2 years ago we have worked on the assumption that our elected European Parliamentarians are using the internet to inform their thinking much in the same way that all of us do. When we don’t know something, or want to find background information, we google it, we go to wikipedia. Our survey supports this assumption. We now have data. 93% of MEPs use search engines on a daily basis in their legislative work and you already know how often they turn to wikipedia. When MEPs are turning to the internet so often to find information, it is pretty obvious that public affairs practitioners should consider digital tools as part of any effective public affairs strategy.
- Digital tools in public affairs in Brussels may become more important in the future
In terms of their relative importance in informing policy decisions it is clear that traditional forms of interaction (personal contact, written contact, media, events) with MEPs still rate highly. This is not surprising. Such interactions tend to come in the form of personal contact with identifiable actors and would, I venture, be more likely to be about specific dossiers/legislative proposals. Their importance for influencing decisions may be more readily perceived than the impact of information found on websites.
However, our survey suggests that MEPs will increasingly use social media in their own communications towards voters. As they do so they will begin to realise that the internet offers an opportunity to personally connect with interested voters/constituents, rather than simply broadcast at them. Increased familiarity and a recognition that the personal nature of the contact may make online interaction on policy issues more important in years to come. Such an outlook is supported, albeit anecdotally, by the fact that MEPs who blog are more likely to think that blogs are important in informing their decision-making.
- Digital tools should be an integrated part of implementing your overall public affairs strategy
The two points above do not in anyway seek to downplay the fact that our survey continues to suggest that traditional forms of contact with MEPs are very important in informing the way MEPs think about policy issues. Indeed our survey shows that personal contact (i.e. a meeting, a phone call) is still the number one way to get your message across, closely followed by media and then written communication and events. Our survey supports the view that we all still need to have public affairs strategies rather than digital strategies. These public affairs strategies should be supported and implemented by a combination of tools, including digital ones. Some would call this integration. I am more inclined to call it Public Affairs; communications aimed at informing the course of policy. We simply need to ensure that our Public Affairs toolbox has expanded to contain a full set of tools.
While this may not come as a shock to some, our survey does at least provide some data to back up our thinking. Later this week we’ll reflect on three things our survey has to say about the use of traditional tools in public affairs.
James
Related articles by Zemanta
- Do MEPs tweet, blog and Facebook? We find out. (pagoesdigital.wordpress.com)
- A look back at turn of the century Brussels (pagoesdigital.wordpress.com)
- Understanding the digital lives of MEPs (pagoesdigital.wordpress.com)
- The European Union Twitter Elections (textually.org)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2f28591f-5427-406f-aff8-8556d334306f)
A look back at turn of the century Brussels
- Image by Jungle_Boy via Flickr
Thanks to Aart van Iterson, a former colleague now at Cambre Associates, who points out by email that our current survey of the use of the internet by Members of the European Parliament is not the first time we have undertaken to research how digital tools are being used in Brussels.
Back in 2000 the then GPC (even then an Omnicom company, but at that stage still to become part of Fleishman-Hillard) teamed up once again with Simon Leysen of Morris & Chapman to conduct “a first of its kind survey investigating primarily how the Brussels based international community use email and internet in their work.”
The highlights of the 2000 survey included the following:
- The Brussels based international (EU political) community generally prefer first contact to be established via e-mail rather than by letter.
Over 90% of respondents directly receive and process their own e-mails. - For almost half of those surveyed, the Internet has become their main source of information.
- Before dealing with an organisation, over 70% of respondents say they will visit the organisations’ web-site first to obtain background information.
- Close to 50% of survey participants prefer to download large amounts of data as opposed to receiving it in its original format.
Despite being less than ten years old, our findings from 2000 have an air of a different era about them. Almost like finding that more than half of us prefer the car to the horse to get to work.
In looking at the online communication activities of our MEPs, we should therefore not be too harsh. Much has changed in the tools we all use to communicate in a very short time. At the last European elections the likes of YouTube and Twitter did not exist, google was not a verb and Facebook was only accessible to students at Ivy League schools. With this in mind, the use of any of these tools by MEPs, even just a third of them, is truly impressive. What’s more, I am sure that in another nine years our findings from 2009 will seem so beginning of the century.
James
Related articles by Zemanta
- The European Union Twitter Elections (textually.org)
- European Elections to Be YouTubed (businessweek.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=49f36bda-7341-44aa-850d-6731e8e6888a)
