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  • Blog post
  • 29 novembre 2016

Politicians in a communication storm

The Library and Research team recently attended "Politicians in a communication storm", a conference held at the European Parliament.

In her opening remarks, Mairead McGuinness (Ireland, EPP), European Parliament vice-president responsible for information and communication policy, talked about the role of social media in engaging the public.

In the first panel discussion, the speakers gave insights into social media in the life of an MEP. Ramona Nicole Mănescu (Romania, EPP) spoke about Romania's experience with social media, pointing out that the Romanian President became the first politician to break the one million followers barrier on Facebook. According to Mănescu, any presence online should be accompanied by high level and meaningful content. She also warned of the dangers of misinformation on social media, related to the fact that people read only titles and share articles without verifying their content. Cătălin Sorin Ivan (Romania, S&D) spoke about the advantages of using social media, which include reaching out to many people at once, communicating in real time, receiving instant feedback, and engaging people in one's work and projects. Igor Šoltes (Slovenia, Greens) admitted that he is new to social media, and that every day is a learning experience. Facebook is his social platform of choice, since he believes it to be more politically correct due to its filters and content regulation.

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In the second panel discussion, some of the European Parliament's communication experts presented case studies of successful social media campaigns. The examples used included the International Women's Day campaign and the State of the Union debate.

The second day of the conference began with opening remarks by Sylvie Guillaume, European Parliament vice-president responsible for information and communication policy, who reminded the audience that we live today in an open world where people move from one country to another and use digital technology to communicate. 46% of young people today consider that the development of social media communications constitutes progress for democracy, because it allows more people to participate in the political debate. 80% of MEPs have a personal web page, and 61% of them read social media comments daily.

The keynote dialogue was dedicated to the lessons learned from the US elections, Brexit and the peace process in Columbia. Nestor Eduardo Chiliquinga Mazón, Secretary-General of the Andean Parliament, spoke about the role of traditional media versus social media in Latin America. He presented the work of the Andean Parliament, and pointed out that nowadays more young people are taking part in the integration process and the public debate. His advice was that a cultural change was needed as regards young people's participation in politics. Matt Rogerson, director for public policy at The Guardian, discussed the role of the media during the "Leave" and "Remain" campaigns in the UK. He focused on the dangers of spreading misleading information and false messages to manipulate public opinion. Lance Gould, editor for special projects at The Huffington Post US, shared his insights into the presidential campaign in the US. He said that although each campaign had its own television channels, they shared the same online platforms. He explained that due to Facebook's specific filters, a voter was more likely to receive news only from the campaign which he initially supported, since the website would suggest similar articles to those which he had already clicked on, and on his newsfeed he would see only the posts of his friends, who probably shared the same views.

In the first panel discussion, 'Social media and trust: how to overcome myths and propaganda', Romain Pigenel, speechwriting adviser to the French President, gave several pieces of advice on how to tackle false messages on the internet. According to him, the government should start a conversation with the public, since false news cannot be stopped with more news, but only through dialogue. Rowan Kerek Robertson, the former head of social media at the BBC, spoke about the BBC's strategy in delivering news, which is based on three goals: to inform, to educate and to entertain. Speaking about political propaganda, Sean Evins, EMEA manager at Facebook, warned that people view campaigns through the lens of their own experience, and like and share content that corresponds to their beliefs and values. Susanne Kiefer, member of the East StratCom task force at the European External Action Service, presented the EU's strategy to address the problem of disinformation. The three main objectives of the East StratCom task force are i) to communicate EU policies effectively, ii) to strengthen the media environment and iii) to forecast and respond to disinformation. 

The second panel discussion focused on politics and millennials. Hiren Joshi, social media adviser to India’s Prime Minister, presented Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strategy to engage young people on social media. Carlos Fernández Guerra, director for digital and social media at Iberdrola and former social media strategist for the Spanish Police, presented his recipe for success on social media: I (interesting content) + U (usefulness) + I (impact on people). Philipp Müller, industry general manager for Central and Eastern Europe at CSC and professor for strategy and leadership, drew a portrait of millennials based on research and literature. According to the statistics he presented, had only millennials voted, Clinton would have won the election in a landslide, with 473 electoral votes to Trump's 32, and 75% of millennials would have voted against Brexit.

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