Internet comes into its own for the Euro-elections

The recent European Parliament elections could be called the first “on-line” euro-election. As well as Estonia being the first country to allow online voting, the campaign also saw the Parliament's Communication department launch a series of websites where people could find out about the election and debate topics that were important to them. On Facebook - the international networking site - the Parliament set up a page where people could post comments.

MySpace, My Parliament
 
When you speak of groups in the European Parliament U2 and Coldplay are probably not the first ones that spring to mind. They were among over three thousand people who became friends during the election campaign - among them such luminaries as Barack Obama and leading intellectual Naom Chomsky.
 
As well as individuals there were lots of NGOs such as Greenpeace and Oxfam who joined.
 
On the page people were asked to suggest a question for debate and then people could vote on how they felt. Two such questions were “should same sex marriages should be legalised” (Yes 79%), “is travelling easier thanks for the EU” (Yes 91%) and “is Erasmus the best international dating service” (No 55%).
 
Parliament - it's a scream
 
A screaming women runs into an election station pursued by an axe-wielding murderer, despite her agitated state she still has time to vote - that was the message in an election video viewed over 300,000 times on YouTube.
 
A similar one where the Tour de France leader stopped to vote and bank robbers who wanted to cast their ballot were seen by 95,000 and 75,000 people respectively.
 
The videos were later show on some TV stations and then doctored in turn on the internet by supporters and opponents of the EU alike!
 
Yabs around Europe
 
A fun part of the campaign was the mission of 27 little plastic people - Yabs - to be carried around Europe by travellers to meet various celebrities. To date 7 have arrived - the first to leave was the Swedish one - the last the Polish one.
 
twitter
 
The micro-blogging phenomenon twitter was pressed into action by the Parliament in the period leading up to the election and particularly on election night to give minute- by-minute updates on election night in 22 languages.
 
Flickr - hundreds of photos loaded
 
In total almost 700 photos of the whole election campaign from around Europe and results night on Sunday 7 June were downloaded.