Posts Tagged Brussels
Commission staff (mis)use wikipedia as often as the rest of us shocker
It’s been an exciting day. We cut our weekly staff meeting short. We gathered around our computers shortly after midday to watch the press conference that saw the announcement of the proposed make up of the new Commission. Some we knew, some we didn’t. From our MD to our intern, we love this kind of stuff. We duly dashed off notes to clients. Climate Action Commissioner and DG confirmed. French get Internal Market. Transport to Kallas. Obscure DG ENVI unit transfered to DG SANCO etc.
However, the communication emanating from our office that probably caused the activity today was our tweet on the official biography of the new Irish Commissioner – Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. We tweeted on it as it shocked us to read that the new Irish Commissioner had chosen to set the facts straight about her relationship with another Irish politician, Charles Haughey, in the bio that accompanied her announcement as the Commissioner-designate for Research.
In the office we couldn’t believe it. Why on earth would you want to repeat such an accusation, even if untrue, in your official bio? Did Brussels really care? Would the Irish press really focus on this? We discussed what we believed the strategy behind this bold move could possibly be. Surely they couldn’t believe that a premptive strike on an old story that no-one in Brussels had read anyway was the right way to go? Did the Commission-designate care so much as to insist that this statement was inserted in the bio?
Well, no. The answer would appear to be the bio was in part a cut and paste job from her wikipedia entry, rather than an original piece of work. (Thanks to @ako9000 for the detective work). If you’re looking for the bio, it was here. This evening it’s not online due to technical errors…
It goes to show a few things. Firstly, if you’re writing a biography of a Commissioner-designate you probably don’t want to lift it from wikipedia. Especially if wikipedia repeats salicious and untrue details about your new Commissioner’s private life. Wikipedia may be a good starting point for research, but it aint necessarily the truth. Secondly, you can seek to insert balance into a wikipedia article, but balance is not necessarily a good thing. The fact that wikipedia says an accusation was made but it’s untrue does stop the accusation from being repeated. Finally, twitter can be a powerful tool to spread news – however pointless – quickly. Within seconds of our tweet, our own followers had retweeted and theirs had retweeted again. 174 followers had clicked on our tinyurl within an hour of our tweet according to hootsuite.com
James
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3 comments November 27, 2009
Public Affairs Action Day – 30 November
Conference season is upon us once again. And boy does our workshop at last year’s Public Affairs Agenda two day extravaganza seem like an age ago. This year we’re partnering with the good folks at Dods on their European Public Affairs Action Day to be held on the 30 November at the Renaissance Hotel (it is a day rather than a summit this year, but the hotel remains the same).
We shall be hosting one of the workshop sessions, which will be structured in the form of a panel discussion complete with Q&A. Our panel is entitled “To Twitter or not to Twitter: the use of digital tools in public affairs” and will run in the second morning slot from approximately 11.30 until lunch. Appearing on our panel will be:
- Alexander Alvaro MEP talking about the use of the internet by Members of the European Parliament in and after the election campaign earlier this year.
- Pat Cleary our SVP of digital public affairs from our Washington DC office talking about the use of twitter in advocacy campaigns on the basis of a recent piece of work he did for the Fix Housing First coalition.
- Mark Redgrove. Mark heads up communication at manufacturing industry association Orgalime. He shall speak about how his organisation is using the internet to support advocacy in a Brussels based context
Registrations are not yet open, but should be soon here. We hope you can join us.
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James1 comment October 20, 2009
Pan-European politics: Can the internet connect the dots?
A new event announcement that is of interest lands in our inbox. Personal Democracy is holding a European conference in Barcelona on 20/21 November. Speakers include representatives from the US but also Europe and of course the Brussels bubble. Jon Worth and Susan Pointer of Google among them.
Topics to be addressed include:
- Pan-European politics: Can the internet connect the dots?
- New possibilities for collaborative government
- Using the internet to open up politics outside the parties
- Transparency and participation: What is real e-government?
- What should European politicians and parties learn from the Obama victory?
- Using social media to transform the relationship between voters and their representatives
- State of the art politech: how to use mobile, video and social networking to advance your cause
- New media vs traditional media: how to navigate the new environment
There are many conference on digital communications, but it strikes us that us that this conference is more appealing that most given its focus on the interesting nexus of politics and digital communications. Right up our street.
James
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1 comment October 7, 2009
What is Public Affairs? Some thoughts from a global perspective
Image via Wikipedia
This last week saw our latest Global Public Affairs Leadership meeting here in Brussels. In attendance were public affairs practitioners from global centres like Beijing and DC, major European capitals such as London, Berlin and Paris and a host of other places from Latin America to Canada. It just goes to show that wherever you are, the public policy agenda is likely to have an impact on your business.
It was great to participate in some informed debate on hot issues; the regulation of financial service markets, energy security and climate change and consumer product safety amongst them. It would appear that increasingly issues are global and markets interconnected, even if the issues play out locally.
Much the same observation can be said for public affairs itself. While the objective may be the same the world over, the tactics used may change depending on the market, the regulation in place (in terms of direct contact between stakeholders and government) and the issue and its lifecycle. The discussions led me to the observation that it was worth putting down somewhere my own understanding of some of the terms discussed – from communications to public affairs and finally government relations.
I’ve tried to do so in the attached file below.
Public affairs and government relations diagram
I’d be interested in people’s reaction especially in Brussels where the terms government relations and public affairs tend to be used interchangeably. At the same time communications tends to be looked down upon by those who only do the strict lobbying piece, as if decision-makers are only informed by views expressed in one-on-one meetings. Our recent digital MEP survey suggest otherwise.
One final thought. Our session on this subject matter appeared to me to suggest that the conditioning of the environment in which decisions are taken (i.e. the public affairs as opposed to government relations piece) is increasingly important for actors irrespective of the market they are in. It is in this context of course that digital tools fit in…
James
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Add comment June 28, 2009
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
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- 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)
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3 comments May 25, 2009
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
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- The European Union Twitter Elections (textually.org)
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1 comment May 22, 2009
Do MEPs tweet, blog and Facebook? We find out.
- Image via Wikipedia
Today we launch the results of our European Parliament Digital Trends Survey – www.epdigitaltrends.eu It examines how Members of the European Parliament are using the internet to communicate with their voters as well as how the same MEPs use the internet to inform their daily legislative work. As such, we hope that the results are interesting both for MEPs and for Brussels public affairs practitioners.
In summary MEPs are using the internet to communicate to voters but are not yet for the most part using all the tools available. No doubt MEPs have come a long way since the last elections, but there is still a road to travel.
For public affairs practitioners we believe that our results support the view we espoused when we started this blog 2 years ago. Like all of us MEPs are going online for information to inform their decisions. To be effective, our public affairs strategies need to integrate digital communications into their toolbox of tactics. Digital can not replace traditional tools such as contact programmes and media relations it complements them, rendering our activities more effective.
On the microsite www.epdigitaltrends.eu you will find the following:
- Our main results with supporting statistics
- An e-brochure
- A full report
- A library of downloads, including graphs and the raw data for you to make your own analysis and graphs
- Commentary from MEPs
- An opportunity for you to post your own thoughts
- The charities we supported in conducting the research
- The methodology we used – sample size etc.
In the coming days we shall be taking time to reflect on what the different parts of our results mean for public affairs practitioners in Brussels on this blog.
Thanks to all MEPs who participated and to the hardworking FH team who made it all possible (everyone in the office played some role but in particular I’d like to thank Mike, Reg, Veronique, Liliana, Julie, Carey, Aurelie, Tim, Michele, Jay, Clara and Rosie)
We look forward to your reactions to the results on the microsite and to having a debate on this blog about what our survey says about digital public affairs.
James
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2 comments May 18, 2009
Welcome, The Lobby
We welcome another public affairs agency into the blogging world; Grayling EU has launched ‘The Lobby‘.
While possibly mistaken for the title of John Grisham’s next book (if only Brussels were so exciting), we eagerly await The Lobby’s contributions to the Brussels Blog-Bubble.
Add comment May 11, 2009
Public Affairs (News) Goes Digital
Our industry’s (UK based) trade rag PA News – “essential reading for lobbyists” – proudly announces today by email that it has gone digital. Alas, a mouse click later here and we find that all that this venerable publication has done is place its print copy in a e-magazine format online. It would appear that the public affairs industry is still to learn that simply putting content online that would have otherwise been in ink (and charging for it) is not what it is all about.
Now forgive us if you feel we are being harsh (and perhaps we are, as this may be but the first step for PA News), but it feels like a missed opportunity. At a time when there is lively debate about public affairs, elections on the horizon and a game changing moment in the way the world regulates, what the profession could do with more online places for news, expert views and the active sharing of ideas. While PA News sleeps there are perhaps opportunities for newcomers like publicaffairsworld.com to bridge the PA digital divide.
James
1 comment April 7, 2009
We twitter on EBS2009, do you dare to care?
A year ago we posted on the European Business Summit 2008 and their use of video and blogs for their event. Well they are back again for another go – blog here and website here - and so are we.
This time we have decided not to comment on their blog, which seems to have more content that last time around, but instead to take up the challenge offered by New Europe this morning and to twitter from Brussels’ premium annual business/policy event. I know, you are about to all enter into existential angst about whether Twitter is a passing fad or actually useful for something. Debate away. However, it’s late and we want to go home. We know it’s working for some of our clients and that’s enough for now.
So if you are really interested (and herein lies the rub of Twitter) in what we think of events at EBS 2009, you can follow us at twitter.com/eurotwittering late next week, hashtag ebs2009 will be used throughout.
James
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Add comment March 18, 2009
