Here is the contribution of Alexander Alvaro MEP in two parts. The Q&A session of the panel discussion will be uploaded in coming days.

James

As part of our recent global public affairs practice meeting here at Fleishman-Hillard, we managed to catch a minute or two to camera from some of our colleagues from around the world. Struggling for a place to put the clips, we created a YouTube channel all of our own here.

Amongst those contributing to our discussions on the challenges facing companies around the world was former European Commissioner and current member of our International Advisory Board David Byrne.

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)
• European Elections to Be YouTubed (businessweek.com)

Swedish MEPs’ willingness to embrace digital communication channels is a factor well worth bearing in mind for anyone wanting to engage with these MEPs in the next European Parliament. More about these trends soon in an FH report about how MEPs use digital tools.

– Magnus

It seems that the video is promoting science research in the EU, though the web site it sends viewers to, Marie Curie Actions, could do with some work. It is supposedly “”The People Programme under the 7th Framework Programme”, but we’ are lost as to what that is.

With the desperate need for Europe to foster (and finance!) innovation, new technologies, and protect its industrial knowledge base, we hope that this video is just part of a bigger project.

Happily, video footage of the incident is all over Youtube. The clip I saw already had over 200,000 hits – see below

A question – is it a good political strategy for politicians to lose their rag on TV? Remember the old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Perhaps this is all part of a cunning plan to use the power of digital to boost Sarko’s flagging Carla Bruni-inspired ratings…

Another example: Type former UK Deputy Prime Minister “John Prescott” into Youtube, the first entry you get is the infamous “John Prescott Punch”.

As one Youtube comment put it: “I think there should be more public vs. minister fights. Imagine the TV ratings.”

In fact, the internet is awash with politicians behaving badly – mass Parliamentary brawls being ever popular with Youtubers. Bolivian, Indian, Jordanian and Russian MPs have all taken their differences a bit too far in the past. But absolutely no-one can match the carnage often seen in the Taiwanese Parliament – see this compilation:

Such a crying shame these scenes are never repeated in the EP. The only fun we have is when Berlusconi comes to town.

We have sought to keep it simple, so we’ve contrasted the traffic for the main three political European groups (sorry UKIP) since the last entry on the subject. Despite the prevalence of Socialist MEP bloggers it seems their group is a little bit behind in the video stakes.

You can also look at the cumulative numbers, which in the case above would show the ALDE with a commanding lead. Interestingly, once you have inputted the channels you can then drill down to see the breakout of traffic over time for individual videos on the channel. As we have done here for EUTube, which is the only one of the featured YouTube channels getting serious visitor figures.

Note that on Thursday last week the UEFA/Commission video on featuring armchair football, which incidentally is worth watching, managed to overcome our favourite “Come Together” Commission offering. A case of a vid going viral for a day – or simply lots of people at UEFA having a look? Finally, here is one for the MEPs, where iJules leads the field this week.