Posts filed under ‘grassroots’
Exclusive here* – photos of the EP elections “tri-dimensional installation”
* These photos are probably not exclusive, as I happened to be walking by the Altiero Spinelli building yesterday with a camera, so I snapped a few photos. When I left the parliament an hour later, the workers were covering the structure with a blue cloth.
As it turns out, this is the ‘hard’ part of the EP communication strategy for the 2009 European Elections. It asks hard questions, such as “How open should our borders be?” and “How much labelling do we need?”. The “soft” part is the EP elections website, launched a few months ago.
The wall, I presume, shows choices, if if that wasn’t obvious, there is a phonebooth “Choice box” next to it.
Tune in to the EP live broadcast at 10:30 for the official unveiling.
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- Over the hedge?
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- How to hide in front of the EP.
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- Your choice… in a box.
50/50: Going Digital for Gender Equality
When we started this blog, we sometimes had the impression that we had to actively look for examples of the use of digital tools for political campaigns. A year and a bit later, things have changed significantly (fortunately!) The “50/50 Campaign for Democracy” is one of the most recent cases we have happily stumbled upon.
The main goal? Ensuring a 50/50 women-to-men representation in the 2009 European Parliament elections as well as the new European Commission.
How? The website is maybe a bit too wordy for the casual visitor, but it does have a practical section called “Take action” with specific ideas on things to do to help achieve the goal (ranging from a simple signature to participating in local activities, to sending a letter to your national political parties… and they even give you the template to make it easier!)
Who? The campaign is run by the European Women’s Lobby and has an impressive list of supporters, including prominent political figures from the EP, Commission, as well as national governments….
One gets the impression by looking at this that the PA-Digital link seems to be really catching on… among the campaign supporters are many prominent bloggers including European Commissioner Margot Wallström, Anna Diamatopoulou now active in Greek politics (sorry, blog in Greek), and the Spanish Minister for Equality Bibiana Aido who at age 31 is possibly the youngest blogger (and politician!) in this group.
Yes, we admit we have selectively only mentioned female bloggers in this post, mainly because there is a question some of us have been discussing recently and thought this would be a good occasion to ask your opinion…
Do you think women are more active bloggers than men in the public affairs arena??
What do you mean you don’t have a website?
This morning, on my way back to the office, a marching brass band, 10 three-meter tall cardboard smokestacks and a few dozen people in black t-shirts carrying black balloons that read ‘NO MORE COAL’ headed the other direction towards the European Parliament building. I asked a girl for the group’s website address, hoping to learn more.
“We don’t have a website”, but she handed me a flyer.
What do you mean you don’t have a website?! She explained “We’re a coalition of groups, so you can get information on any of our websites”.
The groups involved, according to the black and white flyer, are WWF, CAN Europe, Greenpeace, Friends of Earth Europe, die klima-allianz, Christian aid, and the World Development Movement. Clearly this coalition invested a lot of time and money into the event, and I can’t help but think that they made a massive oversight by not having a website or a microsite for the event.
The cynic may point out that since Fleishman-Hillard offers a full-service digital group that builds anything from fancy emails to websites of all shapes and sizes, then of course we would argue that every event needs its own website. But in this day and age, with the low costs of websites, I can’t see any reason to not have at least a one page microsite or a dedicated page on an existing website, no matter how short-lived the event.
Just on the other side of Place du Luxembourg, one can see a digitally-driven campaign. Vattenfall has placed a massive digital screen asking people to go online and ‘Sign the climate manifesto’. The engaging website has a live webcam of the screen on Place du Luxembourg and a video of what happens when you ‘sign’ the online manifesto.
11.5% of MEPs are bloggers
Some of our regular readers may have remembered that in a recent post, we mentioned that we were undertaking a digital audit of MEPs. The poor FH souls whose job it was audit all 785 MEPs will go down in history for their services to digital (thanks Jez, Ed, and Karen!).
- 82 89 90 MEPs have blogs, which equates to just over 10% 11% of all MEPs. A full list with hyperlinks is at the bottom of this post.
- France and UK currently have the most MEP bloggers (11), with Spain a close second (10). Germany and new kids on the block Romania follow with 7 8 bloggers each. Surprisingly Italy, a supposedly blogging friendly country, has only 2 MEP bloggers and is easily outstripped by Poland who has 6.
- In terms of groups the socialists are the clear winners with 34 36 37 MEP bloggers and are some way ahead of the EPP who have just 19 20. Meanwhile the Greens, 10 MEP bloggers, are just behind ALDE who have 11 MEP bloggers.
Anyway, for the record, these are the MEP bloggers we’ve found (and been told about!) with hyperlinks to their blogs – if you think we missed any, do let us know:
Francisca PLEGUEZUELOS AGUILAR
Luis Francisco HERRERO-TEJEDOR
Harvard Political Review and Politics 2.0
Good to see the Harvard Political Review’s online edition turning its attention to the impact of digital on politics.
Interesting point raised in the article - does the use of digital in campaigning encourage undue focus on senstionalist and controversial issues (i.e. misspeaking Clintons, Obama’s pastor etc) at the expense of discussion about substantive policy issues?
User-generated political parties
Nice development for digital politics in the “ooh-arrghh” west of England. A new political party, the Social Liberalists, was officially registered by the Electoral Commission end July.
It’s been created by 18 year old Ben Lewis and some of his school mates, as reported in the renowned Western Morning News of Plymouth.
Interesting to see how instrumental digital has been in the formation of the party. According to the founder, the ideas for policies and manifestos only came about because he and his friends had been listening and debating for quite a while on online forums and on websites.
Aside from the ongoing use of internet voting in elections, I wonder if the shaping of future party manifestos and ongoing govenrment policies could indeed use digital to canvass public opinion a little more. This would allow for a more bottom up approach to political priorities.
An example: it was recently announced in the UK that knife crime has overtaken terrorism as the No 1 priority for the Metropolitan Police. Couldn’t we easily use use a facebook poll to let the public decide this sort of thing.
Depends if you’re a pluralist or elitist I guess…
Roadtripping for Europe
Image via WikipediaThis summer, scores of Europeans will strap their sandals on over their black socks, get some sun on those pasty shoulders of theirs and engage in the yearly southward migration ritual. While some will stay within the confines of their Member State, others will scour the farthest reaches of the Schengen area in search of Europe’s greatest nude beaches.
The Newropeans are not amongst the aforementioned. Nay, these selfless troubadors will donate their summer to the cause of spreading the European gospel.
Er, something like that.
I quote:
“20 teams of 4 Europeans will go by camper vans from mid July to the 3rd week of August along the European coasts in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Belgium and Holland to meet Europeans and promote Newropeans.
Newropeans will pay the fuel, the camper vans rental and of course the materials to distribute. The teams will take care of the rest.”
“The rest”? Surely they’re referring to the cans of Carlsberg and packs of Gauloises. But wait – it gets better.
“10 teams of Europeans (between 3 and 10 people) will go to main European rock festivals to meet Europeans and promote Newropeans.”
Sound too good to be true? That’s because it is – the Newropeans are not out to promote “sea, sex and sun”. No, they’ll be getting the message out about the 2009 European elections. But as the American elections have taught us, what better way to promote awareness of upcoming elections than “sea, sex and sun“?
James has brought it to my attention that young Republicans in the US (yes, all old men were young once) are doing something similar to this – (quote) “fun and awesome”.
“The Where Is The Red crew is connecting GOP districts from coast-to-coast to support GOP candidates and stopping along the way to help Republican challengers” – all while blogging their way across the US.
Rising petrol prices be damned! I’ll be following them (via their blogs) and wishing I was in a caravan somewhere between here and anywhere.
An American in Paris – talking about America
No, this isn’t the title of a French horror movie – or even a francophilic indie film poking fun at its less gentrified countrymen. Last week in Paris, Fleishman-Hillard CEO Dave Senay (who is American by my own professional estimation) gave a presentation on the digital media employed by the Obama campaign in the US to an absolutely packed auditorium at Science Po. It’s no secret that the Obama campaign has generated a massive amount of interest in Europe (and indeed the rest of the world), but it takes a room full of 500 French students hanging on every simultaneously interpreted word of an American CEO talking digital communications strategy to hammer the point home.
As an American who has, at times, found himself in Paris, the last thing I would have deemed wise would be to give a ‘lecture’ (even within the hallowed halls of Sciences Po) on something as quintessentially American as a half-Kansan, half-Kenyan Senator from the great state of Illinois. But there was Dave, speaking in English to a crowd of French students, journalists and whoever else could fit in the auditorium – and they couldn’t get enough.
No disrespect to Dave, who is a fantastic and encaptivating speaker and presented wonderful material, but the crowd was there because Barack Obama transcends America – he speaks to the rest of the world as much (if not more) than he does to his own countrymen. Is it his message or his method?
As Dave’s presentation (materials to come soon) shows – the methods that Obama is using to communicate his message are as revolutionary as an old populist named Andrew Jackson used in 1828. While Jackson’s novel use of a new creation – the postal service – probably weren’t noticed on this side of the Atlantic, Obama’s use of digital communications platforms like youtube and facebook certainly are.
With America’s recent past of ignoring everything beyond its own borders, it feels good to be connected again. But why does Europe feel such a strong connection to Barack? Without detracting from both his message and the man himself, the simple answer is, because they are connected to him – 24 hours a day at 256k bps.
- Coverage of Dave’s speech appears in this article on the online edition of the French daily Le Monde
Why do letters on the size of sow stalls move MEPs?
Source: WikipediaWe highlighted the success of the online petition and social media activities of the Burma campaign last year and it seems that Tibet has also sparked a similar online movement. With the digital world potentially lowering the barrier to entry for those wishing to gather support around an issue, a Friday morning coffee corner conversation overlooking a cold Square de Meeus got us thinking about whether “expressed” public opinion counts more in some policy areas than others.
Why is it that a petition like oneseat doesn’t have an effect, while a regular handful of letters on animal welfare issues get UK MEPs of all political colours speaking in unison in favour of larger sow stalls? It could be of course related to the fact that the site of one of the EU institutions is an intergovernmental decision and our directly elected representatives in the EP have a say in the comfort of the humble pig. The latter are perhaps more suceptible to “public opinion”, after all they are the only elected EU institution. Or perhaps our politicians make a distinction between issues the voting public have something to say and issues that should be left to those that know? They may of course have a point.
In any case, the animal welfare example just goes to show that one doesn’t need a supporting cast of millions to sway policymakers in Brussels and thus targeted online digital grassroots could be an effective way of getting a result, depending on the issue of course. Thankfully, our clients are more likely to be interested in swaying the size of sow stalls than the locations of institutions – small things tend to have big impacts. As such, a cast of millions may grab the attention of Commissioners, but is it needed?
From one seat to one president – a new digital dawn in Brussels?
Hats off to Brussels bloggers Jon Worth and Jan Seifert as they embark on a new Brussels digital campaign called “Who do I call?“. Their aim is simple. They think that the Commission President and newly created President of the European Council should be the one and same person.
While we still remain to be convinced about the merits of the case, we do admire the team’s online efforts. (Admittedly as some of us have yet to really think about it – this thinking usual happens when we should be relaxing). You can support in a number of ways from a simple signing of their petition, signing up on Facebook, putting the banner on your site to translating their copy into another language. The choice is yours. For the first time we have seen in an EU based campaign, the guys are using many of the tools out there to take visitors through all of the stages of online activist engagement, with the exception of getting people to take their activity offline…
As Jon readily admits, the challenge will be to see whether their own (formidable) online and offline networks will draw enough support to the campaign centre. Unlike the one seat campaign and the 1million4disability, they do not currently have the kind of ready made organisational support of traditional NGO grassroots campaigns. It’s an interestingly experiment to see whether a European campaign can start online and migrate offline as attention builds. Clearly however, the team is already using its online contacts to spread the word and is actively looking at networks they are already part of to join the cause (hence this blog post). More posts in Facebook groups and a guest appearance on Blogactiv’s ideas page are perhaps in order in the coming days.
BTW – it’s great to see best practice blogger relations techniques being used here in Brussels. It’s just a pity that this time around we are the subject of the blogger relations, rather than the ones undertaking it!
