Public Affairs 2.0

Today is significant. Firstly, it’s 30 degree sunshine in Brussels, and secondly it’s the first day of the French Presidency of the EU. Bonjour.

As a shameful Anglophone, I’ll be dusting down the pocket dictionary, practicing my rolled Rs, and getting ready for six months of unmitigated Frenchness. And hurrah for it, as an initial look at the French Presidency’s website reveals our “citizen-orientated” Presidency is taking its digital communications seriously.

So often EU presidency websites have been about as exciting as the Solvency II proposal (apologies to our Financial Services team, who are all very special). However, it looks like Sarko and co have decided to raise the bar. Here’s how:

PFUE TV: the inspirationally-named PFUE TV (there was apparently a huge debate about whether or not to include the “P” and the “E” :)) is the most striking addition to the usual presidency stoge. The channel has, at the moment, limited content and is horrendously slow to load - let’s hope that something more dynamic than speeches by Fillon and Kouchner will be added over the next six months (more Carla Bruni please!).

EVENTS MAP: the French events map is a cool idea and uses Google Earth to identify events taking place in France over the next six months. Nice thinking.

CALENDAR TEST: As a public affairs professional it tends to drive me insane when I cannot easily access Council meeting documents. So I’m going to try it now…and I’ve failed; well I tried to get info on the ECOFIN Council next week, and there’s no agenda there yet. I guess it is still early so the jury’s out on that one.

WEATHER: I’ve noticed other Presidency sites have done this, but who in their right mind goes to an EU Presidency website to check the weather. I’d say that there’s a huge cloud gathering over Lisbon following the recent storm in Ireland…(oh dear)

Other thoughts on the French Presidency from our colleagues in Paris are more than welcome…

Our digital practice in Europe has recently launched the results of a piece of research conducted in France, Germany and the UK with consumers on the impact of the use of the internet on their decisions. The Digital Influence Index that results uses both the time spent on different media and the influence consumers say it has on the decisions they take to come to an index that we shall be using to track the growing power of the internet over time. The study was undertaken by FH with Harris Interactive.

Unsurprisingly, the study comes to the conclusion that the internet trumps both print and broadcast media in terms of the influence it has on consumer decisions. Clearly, there is a lot more to the study than that, so click here for the social media release with lots of further info, pics, speeches, exec. summaries and media coverage.

While the study focuses for the most part on decisions consumers take, rather than political decisions, it does address the latter. Interestingly our bods come to the conclusion that political decisions by citizens are less likely to be influenced by the internet than other consumer related decisions.

Having said this, it is clear, at least for me, that the study underlines the potential impact of digital on public affairs and politics.

1. The influence of the internet scores highly (61%) in terms of citizen behaviour of campaigning on an issue. This compares favourably to campaiging for a political party (45%) and voting in an election and way above voting in an election (18%). Speculating wildly, one might argue that this confirms the issue driven nature of the internet rather than the party political. This underlines the fact that on our issues, Brussels public affairs people might find rich pickings in finding and mobilising people around issues online. It should be our natural hunting ground for third party advocates. (see p. 11 executive summary)

2. Political parties/candidates need to be on the net. While the influence of the net on votes in elections may be lower than on other forms of political activity (see point 1. above), in terms of influence different kinds of sites have content from “sponsored sites” (i.e. party/candidates) scores highest of all 61% and non-sponsored sites score second highest 42%. (see p.12 executive summary). This suggests that the politically interested are going online to get their information and that more candidates/parties should invest online to get their message out to their core support - more work for Jon perhaps?

We hope to have some more comments from the people behind the research on here soon, in the meantime your views on the findings are most welcome.

If you have felt a burden upon your shoulders your whole internet-enabled life and it recently seemed to dissipate, leaving you feeling light and free, then Public Affairs 2.0 has just discovered why (thanks, of course, to another blog - Digital Daily). ICANN – the mysterious group who is actually the internet not on computers – has just unrestricted the part of the web address after the dot.

Yes, instead of being limited to .com, .org, .net, .co.uk, .aero, .info, you can now be .whateveryouwant. Go .crazy!

A note of reassurance to our faithful reader(s): The fee to register a ‘top level domain name’ is in the “low six figure dollar amounts”, so you will not see this blog move to .publicaffairs any time soon.

For companies moving into the digital world, this adds a whole new set of complications. Many people are so accustomed to the .com that they will add this to any web address (e.g. vam.london.museum.com - the .com is unnecessary). So on one hand, there is no immediate reason to use a new domain. On the other hand, it is important for companies to preemptively buy the top level domain name, regardless of their plans to use it, so that they can protect brands. Furthermore, as the use of microsites explodes to deal with specific issues, companies will have the weigh many more options for names.

And for the average web consumer, the new morass of addresses will continue to make the web increasingly confusing. One thing is for sure: we will soon need a new search engine, far smarter than Google, to organise the internet.

Image via Wikipedia

Among many unjust accusations, Brussels is considered a back-water of digital integration. We frequently hear that San Francisco, London, Tokyo, New York, Seoul are the digital cities and that Brussels will always be “a few steps behind.”

So it was with great happiness we read that Belgian Paul Otlet conceptualized the internet and World Wide Web long before a valley in California was named Silicon.

From the New York Times: In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

So he may not have connected actual computers, but if the idea came first, it is worth something.

And this should be an impetus to action to those of us in Belgium today, even though many people working in public affairs in Brussels would rather be in Barcelona. We should draw on Belgium’s internet pedigree with pride and place Brussels as a leader in the digital age.

In fact, you could argue that Brussels is most of the way there; it just doesn’t get the credit it deserves. The European Parliament website is far better than the US Congress website, and MEPs are writing blogs and joining social networks at a fast rate.

Furthermore, Google is opening its European centre in Mons, Belgium, as is Microsoft, discussed at length in The Bulletin (5 June, and ironically not available online).

For those who fancy a reason to go to Paris for the day, we have received word that FH global CEO Dave Senay is to speak on the successful use of the internet by US Presidential nominee Barack Obama on 30 June in Paris. A subject close to our heart on this blog, as you may have noted.

Caroline Marchetti and Cyrille Arcamone from FH Paris, who are organising in collaboration with the association of Sciences-Po and RSP.fm, would be most happy to see all those interested in digital and politics turn up for an evening of debate.

Further details on registration can be found in the thumbnail below.

Barack Obama has been recently dubbed in the press as the “Master of Facebook Politics” (see this great NY Times article entitled The Wiki-Way to the Nomination).

This is old news to anyone with even a vague interest in digital public affairs, but now it seems that the mainstream press are waking up to Obama’s pioneering use of social networks in his campaign, especially when it comes to raising money.

Clearly, he was more effective as this than the cash-strapped Clintons. So much so, that many are saying that Obama was effectively elected by the internet.

With this in mind and looking ahead to the Presidentials, it is worth noting that Obama has 953,000 Facebook backers to McCain’s 142,000, according to www.techPresident.com.

With European elections looming, I wonder if any “pennies will be dropping” with some of our more reserved MEPs. Reading the recent Times and Telegraph articles about Obama’s digital success must surely wake a few of them up.

We estimate that at the moment about 2-3% of MEPs have their own Facebook groups (some of our rather unfortunate junior FH colleagues are currently undertaking a rather arduous digital audit of our 780 or so friends on Rue Wiertz). When we get around to it, we’ll post the full results on this site.

Anyway, some notable MEP facebook groupies currently include: Michel Rocard, Ashley Mote, and both Jean Marie and Marine Le Pen. However, I suspect the number of MEPs using such social networking tools will rocket as soon as they realise the financial implications for their upcoming campaigns.

Sometimes even we struggle for plain, easy to understand words to explain the basic concepts and tools of the internet, let alone how they can be used in a public affairs context…we know, it’s hard to believe isn’t it?

Thankfully help is at hand. Our monthly internal knowledge sharing lunch, or “Click & Tell” as we call it, unearthed a site called Commoncraft, which is full of informative videos that explain the basics of web 2.0. in plain English. There are a whole series of videos, including this one on social media. Enjoy.

We recently read on BadScience about the Dore miracle cure for dyslexia, a £2000 treatment which has been associated with NASA space technology (denied) and a research study that ended with the resignation of five members of the editorial board of the journal Dyslexia. Additionally both academics who have spoken out against the treatment and patients who merely said it didn’t work for them have been threatened with libel action.

However, the rights and wrongs of this situation are not the point of this blog posting, but rather the way in which traditional media have blindly supported the cure as a miracle treatment whilst ignoring any evidence to the contrary. The blogging community on the other hand have covered the other side of the coin and analysed the situation using science over ratings.

Proper representation of scientific fact is one of the challenges we often find ourselves faced with in public affairs. Blogs and social media may be the answer to having our clients messages communicated, objectively and supported by factual evidence over sensationalisation.

Despite the amateur nature and lack of control on blog reporting, the blogosphere often proves to be more reliable in many ways. Blog authors have no higher authority telling them what (or what not) to write and many of them have the insight which no journalist could have - some of the bloggers who revealed the Dore case were not only Phd researchers but also had personal experience with dyslexia and autism. Put in contrast, the mainstream media may be trained journalists, but often have no scientific background, and work towards viewing and sales figures.

Hats off to Ben Goldacre of BadScience for highlighting this victory of the blogosphere, and to the science bloggers out there pursuing the truth, based on hard science.

Eureka! EUTube’s newest clip is geek-tastic. Even though the European Commission brought us this clip, which we discussed in an earlier post, it is still unexpected that they have shown such agility on EUTube. Even more shocking that they are making public service videos which aren’t lame.

It seems that the video is promoting science research in the EU, though the web site it sends viewers to, Marie Curie Actions, could do with some work. It is supposedly “”The People Programme under the 7th Framework Programme”, but we’ are lost as to what that is.

With the desperate need for Europe to foster (and finance!) innovation, new technologies, and protect its industrial knowledge base, we hope that this video is just part of a bigger project.

A new social networking site has just hit the digital shelves, but rather than existing solely to aid procrastination, this one appears to have a point to it.

myparl.eu is a political forum and social networking tool for parliamentarians in Europe, including both MEPs and MPs of the member states. On top of allowing European politicians to poke each other and update their relationship status, the site aims to encourage networking between various levels of political strata in Europe and foster debate about legislation at the national and European level.

Topics of any kind can be discussed, but debate will be encouraged on three themes in particular: the Future of Europe, Energy and Climate Change and Intercultural Dialogue. It seems myparl.eu have also managed to get their hands on some interesting coordinators for these forums including: Stanley Crossick, founder of the European Policy Centre, ex-EP Vice President Elly Plooij and David Kral, founder of Prague think-tank Europeum.

The site is for parliamentarians, by parliamentarians and although plenty of MEPs are already digitally inclined, this may entice those at the back of the pack to enter the age of politics 2.0. The project also appears to be a renewed attempt at involving member state parliamentarians in European affairs, with a view to addressing the democratic deficit through networking and open debate. 

The project is being sponsored by the European Commission, and is due to be officially launched in October this year.