Follow-up of our conference :

The conference took place last thursday, the panel of speakers was amazing...

European Parliament on the web...

The first speaker was Florent Le Montagner. “We have to adapt the message and be where people are”. Which social network are used by the European Parliament? Myspace, Flikr, Blog, Facebook and Twitter. He focused on Facebook used by the European Parliament in 22 languages. He expressed few figures... 3 videos – 500.000 views. Chat with President Buzek : 45minutes of dialogue, 151 reactions, 30 questions and 1 coffee. 90.476 fans (most of them from Italy and Germany) on the official page of EP and it is still running.  What about the ecosystem of EP’s life on the web? 74% of MEPs are on the web, 58% of them have a page on Facebook. Nowadays, there is a european society on the web called euro-geeks.

Make it attractive!

According to K Company who works with the European Commission, Laurent Kinet talked about differents steps :

Illustrate: Putting a human face.

Engage citizen: Individual voice from within the EU institutions. In a few words: interactive and socialcommunication.

EU >< US ? “Don’t compare United States and EU. Due to the legislation, we cannot reproduce the US model in Europe”.

Debate : is Europe overcautious?

Juan Arcas highlighted the fact that new media have an influence on the institutions and have modified the way their communicate. But Europe is overcautious. He gave the exemple of Lady Ashton’s team who tried to give way to a debate with citizens on the web, everything was under control...Perhaps too much. Unfortunately,  there was no dialogue because all information was filtered through. He added that MEPs need visibility and we have to distinguish institutions and MEPs especially in terms of visibility. It is still hard to hold its own against  newspapers. The communication’s main lines have changed for paperless and more interactivity.

EU bubble

Jean-Sébastien Lefebvre, european journalist : “We have a group of new media specialized in EU affairs but there are read by a few people – Eu bubble and people interested in EU affairs”. We should not be too technical, we have to change the way we inform EU citizens. The challenge is to inform in a new fashion way.  

Are you convinced by the power of new media?

Tomas Miglierina argued that there are two main problems.: “Bloggers are journalists and there is a pervert effect. You cannot stop technological progress”. The most important thing is that professional code of ethics must remain.

R.I.P traditional media?

New media are complementary to traditional media.

Marjolaine.