European politicians not sold on social media
On Thursday, the European Union undertook the second-largest election in the world, voting in 27 countries to fill 736 seats in the European Parliament. They've got Greens. They've got fascists. They've got countries that want into the system and countries that want out. But you know what they haven't got? They haven't got a whole lot of social networking drama about it.
Yet. According to a spring survey by Fleishman-Hillard, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are only just starting to see the point of extending their digital presence past having a Web site. That part they get -- 75% of MEPs surveyed have a Web site -- but just under one-quarter of the group blogs, and only about a quarter of those who do blog take the time to comment on other blogs. As for Twitter, 62% have either never heard of it or have no plans to use it.
So what did the campaign season look like over there? (With apologies to our European readers for the exoticism. You know how Americans can get.) In the minds of politicians, the most effective tool for communicating with the electorate is TV. "Television appearances" were the communication mode most often rated "very effective" or "effective" by the respondents, with 94% saying so. As much as 80% found "a website" to be very effective or effective, behind speaking at events and, oddly, a bit ahead of one-on-one meetings. Three online approaches were bottom-of-the-barrel tactics for the politicians -- blogging or microblogging (51% "very effective" or "effective"), online video (45%), and online advertising (33%). They don't pay most attention to the blogosphere in any case; only 49% say they consider what they find on stakeholder Web sites "very important" or "important" to shaping their thinking, and just 22% regards blog posts as such. Ow.
That's an interesting disconnect from an earlier Fleishman-Hillard survey, in which the company found that Europeans actually spend more time online than they do using other media, and that consumers say the information they find online has more impact than it does coming from other sources. The Fleishman-Hillard researchers are sanguine in any case: "At the time of the 2004 elections, YouTube and Twitter did not exist and Facebook was open to select university students. In such a short space of time, it is in part amazing that these forms of communication rank so highly."
The politicians agree that change is coming. Alexander Alvaro, an ALDE member representing Germany and one of the first European politicians to establish a serious online campaign effort back in '04, says, "In the 2009 election, I may be one of the few to use the full range of Internet tools. As the EP Digital Trends survey shows, we have a long way to go to catch up with our US colleagues but a great deal to gain."
What to know what MEPs like online? They like search engines. A full 93% use a search engine at least once a day in their work (mostly Google, with 93% saying they use either the main site or a national version thereof). Three-quarters read print-based newspapers online, with FT.com (the Financial Times' online incarnation) attracting the most daily readers and euactiv.eu and europeanvoice.com, two policy-oriented sites, getting the most of the several-times-a-week crowd.
Also, 64% hit the wikis at least a few times each week -- that's right, Wikipedia in the halls of government. And RSS continues to struggle for wider acceptance, with 40% saying they either never heard of it or that they rarely or never used the stuff.
The survey was conducted during April 2009. A total of 110 MEPs participated, most from the EPP-ED (center-right, PES (socialist / social democratic / labor) and ALDE (liberal-democratic) parties. Participation by party was roughly proportional to each party's parliamentary representation at the time.