Culture MEPs call on EU for more European online conversation
The role of the interactive internet in generating European conversations and explaining the European Union should be cautiously expanded says a recent report. It cites the success of the Parliament's 2009 online election campaign and Facebook page as examples that managed to mobilise more young people into European politics. The attraction is that these new forms of "social media" allow a great deal of interaction between electors and elected.
As the report makes clear "politics and communication are two sides of the same coin. Consequently a problem arises if politics fails to be communicated properly. It is in this context that the EU faces its greatest challenge."
The report cites the Parliament as being one of the forerunners of the use of social media (interactive web tools and applications like Facebook, twitter and MySpace) by an international institution.
MEPs on the Culture Committee have already backed the non-legislative report - with 185 amendments - by Danish Liberal and former journalist Morten Løkkegaard on 23 June. The full Chamber will have its say either in July or later in the year.
Getting elected and electors talking
It states unambiguously that "access to information for citizens and communication between policy-makers and voters are central elements" to our democracy. It goes on to say that "the creation of a European public sphere is closely related to the existence of pan-European or transnational media structures".
It also wants clearer explanations of the local, national and European implications of laws and policies being considered in Brussels. For this the local information offices of the Parliament should be strengthened the report says.
In particular the expansion of Facebook and the role in plays in society and politics has been noted by many: "It took television 13 years to reach 50 million viewers - Facebook reached 100 million users in just a few months." That was the view of Freddy Neumann, who runs a Danish online youth project speaking during a discussion of the report in April.
Role of traditional forms of media important
The report also wants to reach out to the more traditional media forms such as TV and newspapers. It calls for public broadcasting to include some European news to tell people more about the decision making process in the European Union.
In addition, in a separate amendment MEPs backed the idea of "setting up a group of correspondents from among the specialised, accredited journalists in Brussels, whose role would be to cover European news in a more instructive manner while guaranteeing editorial independence".
"Extremely worrying" decrease in EU journalists
However, the report also warns about the "extremely worrying" decrease in the number of accredited journalists in Brussels. Partly this is due to the economic crisis and falling newspaper sales which have made it more difficult for the media to maintain a correspondent in the Belgian capital.
The report also calls for EuroparlTV to be developed further and be more integrated into Parliament's internet strategy.
A note of caution however
The report also says the Parliament and the European Union should tread delicately in this area. It stresses "although social networks are a relatively good way of disseminating information rapidly, their reliability as sources cannot always be sufficiently guaranteed and they cannot be considered to be professional media".
It also "underlines that the way in which data is handled on social network platforms can in many cases be dangerous and give rise to serious breaches of journalistic ethics and that caution is therefore required when taking up these new tools."
The report calls for a code of ethics for this new type of media to be drawn up.
Separately, amendments calling for the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs to be directly elected - were voted down.