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Members of the European Parliament fail the Social Media Test

2009-06-04 by


According to a survey by Fleishman-Hillard, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are only just starting to contemplate using social media to extend their online presence.

European Parliament fails the Social Media TestThe survey was based on responses from 110 MEP members, but the results, in our opinion, are indicative on how Members of the European Parliament and other European politicians are using the internet as a tool to connect with the electorate and their supporters.

And here are the official results of the Fleishman-Hillard European Parliament Digital Trends:

  • 75% of MEPs use a personal website extensively.
  • 62% of MEPs have either never heard of Twitter or have no plans to use it.
  • 24% of MEPs use a blog extensively but only 26% of MEPs who blog comment on other blogs once a week or more.
  • 80% of MEPs believe websites to be either very effective or effective in communicating to voters, making websites as effective as one-on-one meetings.
  • 51% of MEPs believe blogging or micro-blogging to be very effective or effective in communicating to voters compared to 81% for writing a newspaper column.
  • 33% of MEPs believe online advertising to be either a very effective or effective way to communicate to voters compared to 57% for TV advertising and 45% for print advertising.
  • 48% of MEPs believe personal contact with representatives of groups of voters to be very important or important.
  • 42% of MEPs believe coverage in national media to be very important in informing their policy thinking, more than twice the number who stated coverage in online EU specialist media to be very important.
  • 32% of MEPs who blog believe blogs to be important or very important in informing their policy thinking, compared with 17% of MEPs who do not blog.
  • 93% of MEPs use search engines daily to understand legislative issues. 54% use Google.com while 41% use national versions of the same search engine.
  • 74% of MEPs visit online versions of traditional newspapers on a daily basis, while 38% visit online EU specialist media each day.
  • 65% of MEPs visit Wikipedia style tools at least several times each week to understand legislative issues, while 36% visit blogs in the same period.
Liliana Dumitru-Steffens About Liliana Dumitru-Steffens

Liliana Dumitru-Steffens is public relations consultant for Pamil Visions PR. She writes for Everything PR since January 2009. Previously she worked for My-tronic GmbH and Unilever Romania. Email Liliana at lsteffens [at] pamil-visions [dot] net.