360DigitalInfluence

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.

Interestingly, those who used the internet to actively engage with citizens and communities online saw this translated into seats – the Greens and Sweden’s Pirate Party in particular. Yet volume of conversation online did not necessarily indicate votes, and vice versa: Libertas topped the monitoring charts but failed to reach the threshhold to secure a seat in the European Parliament, whilst the rise of far-right, nationalist parties seemed absent from online conversations.

So what did we conclude? Amongst other things, that European politicians are behind their US counterparts when  it comes to engaging with citizens online. That citizens are discussing issues online, but mostly at a national level. And that the European Parliament needs to start talking now with the online influentials if they want to engage voters in the next European elections.

The President Obama effect inspired many candidates in the EU elections. The thing is that as in art, inspiration does not meet all the time the publics you were expecting.

That’s probably also one of the main insights of the EU campaign : there’s a huge gap between pushing information and engaging conversation with citizens, whereas in a few months, according to this Microsoft study, Internet will be the most consumed media across Europe. Citizens need interactions, and that’s what they’re already doing together online. And if they can more and more talk directly with brands, why not with their representatives?

Our hypothesis was that this lack of transmission is one of the reasons for the record low turnout. And this lack of transmission has now several explanations:

• except some groups (like Europe Ecologie in France), the campaign started very late. How to create a great attention around a deep topic like Europe in only few weeks ?
• low level of interaction between politicians and citizens in social media. A great majority of direct questions or quotes in microblogging platforms like Twitter ended with no answer. Why promote the fact that you’re closer to European people if they don’t “feel” it and get the information they’re looking for ? The word-of-mouth could not propagate in a wider extent because of this very low dynamic
• low maturity in social media : the majority of groups used social media to only diffuse information in a very vertical way. So that just after the elections, on a lot of official groups or politicans’ twitter accounts, you could not see any updated content. Maybe a disappointing proof that it was not an authentic and faithful long-term relationship…
• the diversity of languages across Europe is a strong limit to interaction. In order to share your views, you need to be able to communicate in several languages. It seems that it’s extremely complicated for citizens to talk together, first because speaking an international communication language like English is not possible for everybody, and second because there was not an identified European platform of discussion

Finally, this lack of European digital public space does not mean there’s not a common interest for the European issues. Why not shape a European platform centralizing diverse points of views that are happening online and moderated by citizens in diverse languages?

Post written by:

Natalie Todd, Public Relations Director, Ogilvy Group, Belgium

Laurent François, head of 360° Digital influence hub, France

Karine Jazra, Digital influence analyst, France