EURO Elections 2009 and Social Media
Elections to the European Parliament will be held in the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) between 4 and 7 June 2009. Seven hundred and thirty six members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will be elected by proportional representation to represent some 500,000,000 Europeans, making these the biggest trans-national elections in history.
Approximately three quarters of the MEPs will be elected on Sunday 7 June, but because of traditional polling days varying from country to country according to local custom, the other quarter will be elected in the three preceding days: in the United Kingdom, for instance, voting will take place on 4 June, a Thursday.
The political parties of European countries are in alert in order to promote their candidates through media. Their main purpose is to convince young people to vote in order to increase the number of the votes and a way to do that is through social media. For example in my country, Cyprus, PR consultants of each party created a group in face book for every candidate by presenting their achievements and work for the community, and also they created blogs where people can say their opinion about the candidates. How effective can that be or how reliable? And what else is happening in the other countries? I believe probably the same and maybe they use more tools of social media. The following video will give the opinion of people about the elections and guess! EU Parliament spends 15 million euro on its own election campaigns.
on March 25th, 2009 at 4:20 am
that is true and i believe this kind of social media (facebook,blogs,etc) can become very powerful means of promoting the campaigns of EU candidates in Euro elections 2009. PR consultants make a good job on issues like this one!
on March 27th, 2009 at 5:40 am
I also agree that such social media tools are enjoying increased popularity for all sort of marketing communications. In my opinion social media are a very powerful tool to increase awareness about specific issues. In that context, PR consultants must find out in which social media their target audiences are actively involved and try to approach them – thus, Facebook is certainly a network that should be considered.
on March 27th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I agree as well. And I think especially to reach the younger audience, social media is a good way to get the message across. With just the use of the traditional campaigns the EU would be far behind up – to – date PR.
on March 28th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
This kind of progress demonstrates just how far digital advancements have come. There is only more to come. Because of its widespread appeal, it shall be a great platform to promote the campaigns of the relevant political parties.
Another excellent example of online political promotion was the Obama campaign. It has been credited with his resounding success, so I’m sure it will do the same for the European candidates who use social media effectively!
on April 7th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I agree with you about the becoming popularity and usage of social networks, it replaces yours real friends? activities?
social networks todays companies they use it as the communication tool, to reach their customers directly?