A survey of Scandinavian Techpolitics

Why aren’t there more techpolitic attempts in Scandinavia? Why isn’t there a Sunlight Foundation in Denmark, a MySociety in Sweden, a FarmSubsidy in Norway? (This blog post was also posted at Personal Democracy Forum’s European blog)

That’s something I’ve been wondering about, since the Scandinavian countries have among the highest internet usage in the world (in Finland, it will even become a legal right to have a one megabit broadband connection), high degree of openness in politics (ex, all municipalities and ministries in Norway have electronic mail journals that are available for the public. Margot Wallström, the Swedish Vice President in the European Commission, has a similar service, mail register) as well as populations with fairly high educational levels. In addition, we also know that social networks, such as Facebook, are extremely popular.

Some would argue that the more open a country’s own government and political culture is, the less likely you are to see bottom up efforts like MySociety or Sunlight. Is the distance between power-holders and the people so short and the possibilities for influence so many that we don’t need tools like TheyWorkForYou? I doubt so. Are the techpolitics enviroments in these countries too tiny to foster the kind of political digital innovations we’ve seen in the UK and the US? Maybe. We could also blame lack of good funding possibilities (except from the government), since we have few independent foundations similar to Sunlight.

We do see lots of examples of online communication between elected officials and the public, but not that many collaborative (problem solving) projects. However, there are some attempts, and we’ve gathered the most interesting cases for you. If you know of any other Scandinavian or Nordic political collaborative projects, let us know in the comment section.

Transparency/public data – efforts to make public data accessible to all on the Internet; free, searchable, clickable.

• Digitaliser.dk (Denmark) – overview of public data resources in Denmark. The purpose is the encourage the use of public data in new ways. Similar to data.gov.
• Opengov.se (Sweden) – overview of public data resources in Sweden. The goal is to highlight the benefits of open access to government data and explain how this is done in practice. Similar to data.gov.

Collaboration/ political ideas – tools to make it easier to cooperate and solve political problems.

• Ideoffensiv.dk (Denmark) – portal for political ideas in Skanderborg municipality. People can present ideas, discuss them, vote, and follow how the municipality is dealing with the political ideas from the public.
• GataMi -Tromsø municipality (Norway) – report a problem in your neighbourhood, ex a pothol or a broken street light. Similar to FixMyStreet.
• Malmøinitiativet (Sweden) – portal for political ideas in Malmö municipality. Suggest a political idea, and get support from you idea from the local community.
• Yr.no (Norway) – weather data presented in a user-friendly way, based on public data. Project developed by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
• Hendelseskart (Norway) – political event map from the local newspaper Asker og Bærum Budstikka. Political events from the past 3 months are marked on the map (in addition to crime, accidents, fires).
• Maktbasen (Norway) – the “Power database”, a mashup with data on national and local politicians, their economic interests as well as their voting records.
• Fakta først (Norway) – blog and reasearch project about public data.
• HvemStemmerHvad (Denmark) – overview of Danish national politicians’ voting record as well as their absence, starting from 2001.
• Folkets Ting (Denmark) – debate, comment or vote on current law proposals or political speaches.
• Riksdagsmonitor (Sweden) – monitor Swedish national politicians’ voting record and absence.
• Bliv Hørt (Denmark) – digital hearing in the Copenhagen municipality (thanks to HvemStemmerHva for the link)
• Ungdomskriminalistet (Denmark) – ideas for how to reduce youth crime in (suggest ideas, discuss, vote) Denmark, started by the political party Venstre (the Liberals) (thanks to HvemStemmerHva for the link)
• Danmarksdebatten (Denmark – dead?) – digital dialog platform for municipalities and citizens, initiated by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (thanks to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen for the link)

New ways of communicating between politicians and citizens – blogs written by elected officials and bureacrates.

• Bærumbeta (Norway) – blog about communication policy in Bærum municipality.
• Ordførerbloggen (Norway) – the mayor’s blog in Kongsvinger municipality.
• BetaTrondheim (Norway) – blog about web 2.0 possilities and challenges in Trondheim municipality.
• Departementene og sosiale medier (Norway) – blog about how to utilize social networks and web 2.o tools in a ministry.
• Origo.no (Norway) – online community and publishing tool used by 1067 politicians (all the names are confirmed) in Norway. The Norwegian Labour party has developed their own community, MyLabourParty, on the site. (Disclaimer, the writer works as a communication advisor for Origo)

Do you know any other example? Help us update this list in the comment section! (I’m updating as people suggest more links, and add attributes in parathesis).

Obama and the Nobel Peace Price – the social media reactions from Norway

This year’s selection of the Nobel Peace Price started an online outcry the second it was announced. For many people, including the recipient himself, is was a shock that hear that president Barack Obama was awarded. And Norwegians were among those who reacted most strongly against the decision from the Norwegian Nobel committee. Not because Norwegians dislike or disapprove of Obama, rather opposite. During the election campaign, 79 percent of Norwegians prefered Obama rather than the Republican candidate, John McCain.

But awarding him the Nobel Prize after just 10 months in office have been hard to swallow, even for Norwegians.

One of the first tweets that circulated was this: “Obama had been in office in 11 days when the nomination ended” (my translation). And as all social media topics these days, the decision got its own “fail” tag, #fredsprisfail (PeacePrizeFail)

The reactions have been raging from people demanding that Torbjørn Jagland, the leader of the Nobel Prize committee, should resign, to people demanding Obama should not accept the prize. Jagland was recently elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe. One blogger has written a formal complaint to the committee on his blog, and a Swedish blogger, Åsa Linderborg, has suggested to dissolve the prize all together.

Politicians such as the social media active Bård Vegar Solhjell (minister of Education), has speculated on Twitter whether the prize will hurt Obama at home or not, and written a huge question mark after Obama’s name in a blog post.

43 percent of Norwegians meant it was right to give the peace prize to Obama, while 38 percent opposed it. 19 percent had not made up their mind according to a recent survey by Synovate, but if you check the online polls, the numbers are opposite, such as in VG.no. It is also characteristic that the young ones are most critical against the committee’s choice, among the 18 -25 years old, only 25 percent are positiv to Obama as a peace prize winner, 42 percent are negative. Among those over 6o years, 58 percent meant that the decision was right.

It has become political incorrect in Norway to say that Nobel committee made the right decision, according to this blogger (who actually supports the decision). One of the commentators in the same tread is even ashamed to be Norwegian because of the committee’s decision.

For more international discussions surrounding the Nobel committee and their decision, follow the Twitter search for Nobel - as you can see, it is full of jokes, both about Obama and the Nobel Peace Price.  The Nobel Peace Price is also a hot topic at the Swedish blog search engine Twingly. Here is the only article where one of the committee member have been interviewed; “He did not seem very happy” said Inger Mari Ytterholm about Obama when he met the press after the Nobel announcement.

Velgerne vant årets digitale valgkamp

Det er mye vi kan si om politikernes internettinnsats, men la oss glemme det nå.

(Denne artikkelen står på trykk i dagens utgave av Morgenbladet. Fordi man ikke kan diskutere på Morgenbladets sider, legger jeg den ut for kommentarer her. Apology to my international readers, this is an article I’ve written for the weekly Morgenbladet about the digital election campaigns in Norway and how voters have participated.)

La oss glemme Frp og Christian Ingebrigtsens valgkampsang «Fremtiden i dag» på YouTube, la oss glemme Lars «Jeg er ikke på Facebook, jeg er på Stortinget» Sponheim, og Dagfinn Høybråtens nitriste KrF-blogg. La oss rett og slett glemme politikerne i noen få sekunder, og deres mer eller mindre tunge satsning på ulike plattformer på internett – Facebook, blogg, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr eller Origo. For det spennende med denne valgkampen er samtalene vi har hatt – velgerne imellom – og hvordan vi har overbevist hverandre og endret mening.

Skal vi tro på en svært interessant meningsmåling som InFact har utført for Valgpanelet.no, så har hver fjerde voksne person i Norge skiftet mening som følge av noe de har lest på en nettdebatt eller blogg. I den yngste aldersgruppen, de mellom 18 og 24 år, var tallene enda høyere; hele 51 prosent oppga at de hadde endret mening. Og hør, det kommer mer: Frp-sympatisører er de mest aktive nettbrukerne, 32 prosent av disse oppgir å lese politiske debatter på nettsider eller blogger daglig eller ukentlig, mens bare tolv prosent av Venstres støttespillere gjør det samme. Venstre er dårligst av alle partiene i denne sammenheng. Som vi vet fra før, er menn nesten dobbelt så aktive som kvinner i de politiske diskusjonene på nettet (24 versus 15 prosent).

Tidligere i sommer skrev jeg at «Frp mangler internettkoden» fordi jeg mente Frp hang langt etter de andre partiene på nett (utenom etternølerne Sp og KrF). Jeg mente partiet undervurderte velgerne sine og deres internettaktivisme, og InFacts tall kan tyde på at jeg hadde rett.

Mens halvparten av velgerne bestemmer seg og ombestemmer seg etter å ha diskutert på blogg eller i nettdebatter, oppgir majoriteten av de spurte at nettet er den minst viktigste informasjonskanalen – et merkelig paradoks, om du spør meg. TV er fremdeles den viktigste politiske informasjonskanalen, foran papiraviser, radio og nettaviser. Kunnskapsminister Bård Vegar Solhjell har allerede påstått at valget i 2009 kan være det siste der tv er viktigere enn internett. Jeg tror han har rett, og det underbygges av tallene om hvordan vi deler politisk innhold på nett, som for eksempel en YouTube-video. Nok en gang er Frp-erne blant de ivrigste delerne (21 prosent), bare slått av Rødt (43 prosent), mens KrF holder godsakene for seg selv (bare 3 prosent deler politisk innhold på nett).

De sosiale mediene har gjort valgkampene mer underholdende fordi vi er med. Vi skravler på nett og noen hører på. Vi er så mye med at det belgiske selskapet Attentio er blitt hyret inn av Valgpanelet for å måle buzz-nivået i den norske bloggosfæren for å finne ut hvilke partier og politikere bloggerne snakker om. Da dette ble skrevet, var Frp det partiet flest bloggere skrev om.

Teknologien har visket bort de tradisjonelle skillene mellom det private og det offentlige, og som Jonathan Shaw skriver i Harvard Magazine: det holder ikke bare å skille mellom det private og det offentlige. Nå har vi både det private, det offentlige og det veldig, veldig offentlige.

Valg09 har også lært meg å sette pris på det politiske intimitetstyranniet sosiale medier har åpnet for. Takket være Twitter vet jeg at Venstres stortingskandidat, juristen Abid Q. Raja, slanker seg, at han har gått ned 15 kilo på ett år og at han løp de syv kilometerne rundt Dragsjøen på 46 minutter forrige søndag.

Raja har allerede lovet på Twitter: «Om æ kjem inn løper jeg neste år på 40 blank!» Godt valg!

Norway says – share, but don’t steal?

The Share - do not Steal-campaign argues for sharing. Ironically, the logo has not a Creative Commons licence...

A new initiativ by 2300 Norwegian artists and 37 organizations called Dele – ikke stjele (Share -  Do not steal, more info in English at TorrentFreak) is creating new fuzz. And I’m asking myself: Does that mean upload, but don’t download?

Their main argument is to respect the copyrights. Legal filesharing is good. Piracy is bad. Well, not too hard to agree with them in principle, I think it is fundamental that we pay artists for their hard work – the big question is how. The problem is that the campaign has no sollution for how we should do this in practial terms in our digital reality.

They seem to be against a broadband fee, but pro law enforcement – will they support the American way and arrest teens and claim $1.92 million from a single mother for illegally downloading 24 songs? How do you use law enforcement (to protec copyrights online) without surveillance, breaching privacy, human rights, consumer rights, etc.?

This issue will guaranteed become a topic in a debate I’ve been so fortunate to be invited to with one of my favorite tech thinkers, Cory Doctorow (whom I’ve written about here and here). The topic is filesharing and the publishing company Samlaget has also invited blogger and tech writer Eirik Newth as well as publisher Bjarne Buset from Gyldendal on Litteraturhuset on September 14 (election day).

As I wrote in “Europe’s struggle with piracy”, illegal filesharing and copyrights are hot topics in Europe, and as the election is approaching in Norway, politicians have finally started debating these topics as well.

Here is the video from the latest political debate about filesharing that took place today. Socialist Left politician Audun Lysbakken has written about the same debate, here is another campaign about the same topic, Krev Svar (Demand an Answer – where FriBit and EFN demand answers from the political parties regarding copyrights, filesharing, surveillance, data storage, etc). Eirik Newth has also written cleverly about this.

My fear is that the publishing industry will repeat the same mistakes as the music industry – to treat their own customers as their worst enemies instead of developing good, easy and uncomplicated online shops for digital books. As eReaders are becoming better and more widespread, digital books will become more tempting to share among “friends” (what is a “friend” in the digital reality?). I hope the publishing industry will prove me wrong.

The pleasures of the gift economy and a Communist typewriter

Photo: Bente Kalsnes

It was so much fun to see people coming “out” of the internet and into Underskog’s (translated under wood or underground, a popular Norwegian social calendar) market this Sunday. It was gift economy in practise and lots of happy faces and good bargains. And I just loved this Communist type writer with the owner’s description:

“Keyboard from the Soviet erea. 400 NOK ( 46 euro). Thanks to mum and dad.”

I will start working with the guys who started Underskog tomorrow, the Origo/Bengler guys.

Here is an image of the beautiful logo for the market:

Europe’s struggle with piracy

All the kids I talked to this summer while on vacation in Norway, told me that they never paid for music. They found everything they needed online, and downloaded it for free. From Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites. (This blog post is also posted at the Personal Democracy Forum’s European blog)

My very unrepresentative research triggered me even more to read the Swedish book “Piraterna” (the Pirates), about the Swedish file sharers who are robbing Hollywood (my translation). The book gives a fascinating and intelligent view of the Swedish piracy scene, the country where the Pirate Bay originated. But just as I was reading this book, I found an old article from 2001 I had saved about the shut-down of the file sharing site Napster, “How the music industry blew it”, Richard Barbrook’s review of the book “Sonic Boom” at Salon. Guess what – depressingly little had changed since 2001: Technology and law is still on collision course. I do recognise one difference, though: Ten years after Napster’s birth, politicians have started paying attention, but are they doing the right things?

Ten steps to Wiki Government

I’ve been accumulating a blogging backlog throughout this summer – having tons of ideas for blog posts, but little time to write. Well, some of the ideas and insights I wanted to share with you, is a brilliant list written by Beth Simone Noveck. I heard her at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York in June, and recommended by PDF host Micah Sifry, I bought her new book, Wiki Government and read it this summer. Noveck is a director of Obama’s Open Government Initiative, but also the director of New York Law School’s Institute for Information Law and Policy.

The book gives us lots of ideas about how to bring innovation to government, using digital technology. She also writes about the shift from deliberation (talking) to collaboration (doing). As more governmental agencies, politicians and ministries have started using blogs, Twitter, Facebook to communicate with citizens,  it is time to do more the “just” talk and discuss, and start solving real problems with the new collaborative tools such as wikis, databases, etc. She has experienced with collaborative tools through the “Peer to Patent”-project, a groundbreaking project that started in 2005, where the intention was to open up the American patent process to public participation for the first time. She argues that by encouraging, coordinating and structuring citizen participation, technology can make government both more open and more effective.

Here is Noveck’s list of 10 lessons learned about collaborative democracy (from the book):

1. Ask the right questions. The more specific the question, the better targeted and more relevant the responses will be.

2. Ask the right people. Creating opportunities for self-selection allows expertise to find the problem.

3. Design the process for the desired end. The choice of methodology and tools will depend on the results. The goals should be communicated up front.

4. Design for groups, not individuals. “Chunk” the work into smaller problems, which can easily be distributed to members of a team. Working in groups makes it easier to participate in short bursts of time and is demonstrated to produce more effective results.

5. Use the screen to show the group back to itself. If people perceive themselves to be part of a minimovement, they will work more effectively together across a distance.

6. Divide work into roles and tasks. Collaboration requires parceling out assignments into smaller tasks. Wikipedia works because people know what to do.

7. Harness the power of reputation.

8. Make policies, not websites. Improved practices cannot be created through technology alone.

9. Pilot new ideas. Use pilot programs, competitions, and prizes to generate innovation.

10. Focus on outcomes, not inputs. Design practices to achieve performance goals and metrics. Measure success.

A tribute to the good tech people in Brussels

My head has been stuck in boxes for several days after my family’s move from Brussels, Belgium to Oslo, Norway, so not much time for blogging lately. But as I’m taking a break from the moving chaos, I wanted to give a huge tribute to some of the great people with an online presence that I’ve met while I’ve been in Brussels.

As social media really exploded during the three years I stayed in Brussels, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and my own blog proved themselves useful tools to find and get in touch with people who shared the same interests and tech curiosity as myself. I established a Facebook profile back in 2006, a Twitter profile at the beginning of 2008 (thanks to Marius Eriksen, @meriksen who told me about this wonderful new tool), and started my personal blog in 2007 after blogging for a while at Dagbladet.

I’ve met plenty of politics and media nerds in Brussels, but one of most techie politics geeks I met in Belgium was Jon Worth. This energetic, multitalented webdesigner and political blogger is always juggling several projects, and the Atheist Bus campaign is his most famous project so far. Together with Jon, I’ve been doing project under the techPolitics umbrella (where I also met Stefan Happer and Jan Seifert). I hope to see you in Oslo soon, Jon!

Jon also introduced me to Finn Myrstad, a fun and skilled team members  from the Norwegian consultancy the Brussels Office. He is blogging about EU matters with a special focus on Norway’s relationship to the EU.

It was a joyride to meet all the fabulous girls at Brussels Girl Geek Dinners (an event for tech interested girls), and especially the founder, the inspiring and impressive Clo Willaerts (@bnox on Twitter). How she is able to turn all the BGGD gatherings into such professionally events is beyond my understanding and very impressive. Among the cool girls I met on these geeky events were Katrien Cattoor, probably one of the fastest running female bloggers in Belgium, as well as Karen Van Godtsenhoven,(@KarenVG83) retired model and fashion journalist turned tech journalist (what a fascinating combination!).

Another smart and deep tech girl I got to know is Helena de Groot, who writes elegantly about decoding code as well as heavy economic theory. Keep up the hard work, girl!

Twitter opened up a new social chapter, as it suddenly became incredible easy to follow all kinds of more or less interesting people, see what they were reading, thinking, sharing, discussing, joking about – and even meeting.  One of the first Belgium “tweeple” I met was Christian de Neef (@cdn), who also was one of the movers and shakers of the Brussels Twestival. He has already started organizing his second Twestival, this guy has some serious good organizational skills. Fun and engaging Twestival people are also the web designer Gilbert (@blueclock) and internet entrepeneur Roald Sieberath (@roald).

I’m also very glad I bumped into the hard working and superskilled FarmSubsidy people such as Jack Thurston and Brigitte Alfter on several occations, as well as the blogging EU nerd, Andreas Müllerleile at Kosmopolito. Among the Norwegian blogging EU nerds I’ve come across and had good converstations with are Erik Sandquist, Tor Eigil Hodne, and Jonas Helseth, who are updating the Norwegian Labour party’s Brussels blog. Not to forget the funny Frode Fjeldavli, an EU enthusiastic Norwegian national expert who is on Twitter.

It has pleased me to see some of my  Norwegian journalist colleagues in Brussels testing out new digital tools. Simen Ekern, a commentator in Dagbladet, has started blogging and tweeting, tweeting is also Jarle Roheim Håkonsen (NRK) and Trygve Mellvang Berg (NTB). Freelancer Birgit Vartdal has together with some other Norwegian journalist colleagues started a correspondent blog. Thanks for good coffee breaks with you guys!

Everyone, thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas with me, and remember to send me a beep when you are heading towards Oslo!

New city, new job – Oslo, Origo

I’m leaving Brussels this weekend, as I’m moving back to Oslo after three years in Belgium.

It is not easy to leave a place after so many good years here, just as it was hard to leave Washington DC after three years there in 2002. But it’s time to go back to Norway and start up in a new job. I will join the smart geeks at Origo, a Norwegian internet company that builds online communities (similar to Ning). I’m starting as a consultant, where one of my main tasks will be to communicate the message about Origo to a bigger audience.

This will mean a goodbye to journalism for now, but definitively not a goodbye to writing and opinions about technology, media and politics. I will keep on blogging, of course, but where and how much, I’m not sure yet. As you might know, I’m also blogging at the Personal Democracy Forum Europe blog (about tech and politics) and at the Norwegian Europabloggen (about EU). If you are interested in politics, technology and new media, as most of my readers are, remember to sign up for the PdF conference in Barcelona, Nov 20-21!

Now, back to the packing.

The European Parliament’s experience with social media – a post election reflection

As the night was approaching and the last votes were counted on June 7, the final day of the European Parliament ( EP) election, you could read Twitter updates in 22 different languages from EP’s official Twitter accounts. Or debate the outcome with people from all over Europe on EPs Facebook page. (This text is also posted on Personal Democracy’s European blog. Read more about the PdF Europe blog here).

European Parliament on Facebook

To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected that just six months ago, as the EP didn’t even have a Facebook page back then. But these are the days for experimentation and quick changes, and the June 2009 election was the European Parliament’s first experience with social networks. But how does an impersonal institution use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, tools that profile persons, individuals?

Differing from Barack Obama or any other political candidate’s use of social media, EP didn’t have a political cause, other than “use your vote”. I’ve talked with Stephen Clark, EP’s head of web communication to get some insight into the challenges EP faced during their social media experiment. He argues that the “rulebook” for institutional communication has to be rewritten after this election. And even the Vatican had a role to play in this experiment. If the Vatican could have a Facebook page, then it should be safe for the the European Parliament to have one as well, was the message Clark got from his Director-General. To use a religious term familiar to the Vatican, a social media miracle was taking place in front of our eyes. The European Parliament was transforming, experimenting and opening up online (a bit at least). And eventually it also became necessary to be on Twitter, as the web team couldn’t react quickly enough through the main website on the election night.

But first some background on the European Parliament and the European election. Every 5th year, Europeans from the 27 member states (490 millions) are voting for their political representatives for the EP, which consists of 736 candidates representing 7 different political groups. Well, in reality less than half of the population (45 percent) used their vote in the last election in 2004, and speculators said early on that the 2009 election would even worse numbers (it decreased, but not as much as feared, 43 percent).

To increase the voter turnout was also essential for the EP, but how to do that, was one of the questions Clark’s team was contemplating back at the beginning of 2008. Nicolas Sarkozy’s use of online videos in his campaign in the French election in 2007 was inspiring. Later on, Barack Obama’s election campaign was another huge source of inspiration.

- I can’t overstate the impact of the Obama campaign. Obama created a positive environment for us to test out new things. Social networks could have been a hard sell, but it wasn’t. Just as the Obama craze was peaking in mid 2008, EP’s web team got at  specific mandate by political authorities to venture into online “interactivity” and “web 2.0″ when their election campaign got approved, says Stephen Clark as we are seated in the “Mickey Mouse” bar at the European Parliament in Brussels. The huge café is filled with new members of parliament from all over Europe – we are literally surrounded by the result from the European election.

But the most complicated thing with the EP’s social media effort is their requirements for neutrality, nonpartisanship, impersonality.
- Our challenges as an institution was not to put ourselves in front, this is about the members of parliament (MEPs), the candidates, the parties and countries. Our articles on the EP website are never signed, and we don’t link to third-parties sites. In the beginning, some people were even reluctant to have an EP site on networks such as Facebook, says Clark.

The EP web team started their social network effort late. Comparing to Obama, who started his campaign two year before the election, the EP web team had little extra resources, and could only start full time campaign work when the heavy parliamentary work ended in May 2009. They had the Facebook page ready in May, and had also to do some design work for the MySpace site, which launched in April.

More interactive communication, was one of the advices parts the EP’s web team got when they did some training courses with Paul Marsden, a communication expert from London. Clark also realized that in order to understand blogging and the European blogosphere, you need to have your own blog. So the EP’s web editors started their own blog, but it was password protected for six months before they got permission to take it public. EP also started their own YouTube channel and released several YouTube videos during the campaign. One of them, of a screaming girl running into a voting booth, even drew traditional media attention.
- The video was controversial. People either liked it or didn’t. But because the EP was doing this, it became news, says Clark.

All the social media efforts of the EP were interlinked in the end, and content got cross-promoted on different platforms, everything except from the blog.

Summing up the effort, Clark is convinced they reached people and voters they wouldn’t have reached without the social networks.
Even though the voter turnout didn’t improve, rather decreased, and not all the social network effort was successful – only 100 000 people visited the MySpace profile (in comparison, the EP’s election site had 100 000 visits a day), Clark has some interesting insights from the social media experience:

-This can only work if people talk to people. We can’t talk like an institution, but as people. Nobody questioned why we did it. And for the first time, we got really clear feedback on what we did.

The European Parliament’s social media numbers:

• 55 000 people are fans of EP on Facebook. Most fans from Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and Belgium. Low UK numbers.
• 58 percent of the Facebook friends were male, 42 percent female.
• EP’s web team was twittering in 22 different languages languages on election night (EU has 23 official languages, but since none in the EP’s web team writes Irish, EP was not able to “tweet” in Irish).
• 2500 followers on Twitter totally.
• Web team consisting of 27 people.
• 3000 friends on MySpace.
• EP was present at 8 online platforms ( among them Faceboo, MySpace, Bebo, OneNet).
• The web team has cooperated with the communication agency Scholz & Friends (German) on posters, TV ads, 3D installations, online communication strategy, etc.
• 3000 views a day on Flickr.
• 18 million euro was the total budget for the election campaign. Of that, about 2,5 million for social networks.
• Google adwords worked “incredible well” to boost traffic. 1/3 of the traffic to the website came from search. People stayed around on the election site for 2,5 – 3 minutes.
• EP’s web site had about 500 000 visitors on election night to check the results.