Waltzing Matilda

Last week I had the honour of sitting in while the EP webteam did a Facebook chat with Hungarian MEP, Zita Gurmai. I had been curious to see how they actually do it, and since we had also had a request from one of the cabinets, I think it is about time to share with you what I learned last Tuesday. As a bonus, the topic of the chat was the European Citizens’ Initiative, which is an interesting topic seen from a communication perspective, but which we (as far as I know) are not really involved in here in DG Communication.

OK, so here goes: Actually an EP Facebook chat is a really swift operation which in this case went very smoothly. The chat was to start at 12.00, and I met with Raffaella (who manages the EP page on Facebook) outside the Parliament at around 11.45. We went in and up one of the towers and shortly after found ourselves in the office of Mrs. Gurmai, where we were greeted by no less than three people besides the MEP herself (assistant, trainee and advisor I think).

If anyone has been to these offices, you will know that it is pretty crowded by then. So I tried not to be in the way while the event unfolded. On the picture below you can see my notes on two post-its that I shamelessly took from one of the assistants:

The group gathered around Mrs. Gurmai’s desk. Raffaella had brought a laptop and while she tried to connect it, the assistant logged on to Mr’s Gurmai’s Facebook profile and went to the Parliament’s page to wait for the chat session to be launched.

IT infrastructure and interaction
Meanwhile, Raffaella’s laptop didn’t connect to the internet, so the trainee found another one and in the meantime Raffaella explained how they do it: obviously it is difficult to reply to all questions, so basically the MEP can choose which ones to reply to. Raffaella also mentioned what people might ask about, so there wouldn’t be too many surprises underway.  The EP photographer Pietro also showed up and started taking pictures, so during the session there were a total of seven people in the room, of which three were moving around.

Finally, when both computers were ready (MEPs desktop for answering questions and laptop for refreshing the stream of comments and questions), Raffaella phoned her colleague in another building to post a picture of Mrs Gurmai together with the first question in the discussion, which would basically be the stream of comments on the picture. And then it was on!

Mrs. Gurmai was commenting and responding to questions, the assistant was tapping away on the keyboard and Raffaella suggested interesting questions to respond to while also explaining Facebook lingo to the MEP. On Mrs Gurmai’s computer screen all you could see was her own updates, so they would consult  the laptop and refresh the stream of comments to get everything. 

I was trying to follow the discussion on my iPhone as well, so actually three devices were on in the same room.  I tried not to interfere, but it is hard to stay silent when there is so much discussion in a room on a topic you find very interesting.

Mrs Gurmai managed to reply 24 times in 30 minutes. There were a total of 88 comments on the chat that day – that’s not half bad! It was also fun to see how some of the people who joined the chat were already known by Mrs Gurmai: one guy apparently sends her many, many emails and another one was a PES activist in Dublin.

The whole thing was over in almost no time. Then we had a short chat with Mrs Gurmai on equality issues – as she is very passionate about women’s role in democracy.

Perspective for possible EC chats on Facebook
As I said, we have been asked by one of the cabinets how they could use chats on Facebook. Obviously it’s perfectly possible to do it, and I think the very low tech approach is appealing. Also, time is an improtant factor: with the current online chat system (provided by our Colleagues in DG Interpretation) a chat needs to be organised 4 weeks in advance.

But there are some issues to deal with if we want to adopt the model that the EP is using:

1. What should the outcome be? If commissioners do a chat, it should be related to an event, a campaign or communication, or maybe in relation to a public consultation to ensure that people can have a say on the topic without necessarily filling out a survey. So commissioners and their staff should think carefully about how this could feed into the work of the Commission.
2. Very few commissioners are on Facebook with a personal profile. It makes it very difficult for them to participate in the discussion, and I do not see it as a viable solution to create temporary profiles for the duration of the chat. If the profile is deleted afterwards you can’t go back and see who was answering the questions.
3. The Commissioners who do have a Facebook “page” (Kroes, Potocnik, Barnier, Lewandowski, Damanaki, Georgieva and Ciolos) could relatively easy organise chats on their own page with our assistance, but this is not necessarily the best solution if you want to reach special target audiences. However, this might be the most viable solution.
4. We do not only have one central platform, but many distributed pages with very diverse audiences. We have created a Commission facebook page as an experiment, but we are nowhere near the followers that the Parliament has, so we first need to ensure that there is enough people to monitor and follow up on the discussions, and then we would also need to advertise chats like this heavily through all the different EC Facebook pages in advance, so the contact and infrastructure between the EC Facebook pages need to be reinforced. At least until we reach a critical mass on the central Facebook page.
5. Advertising the chats on facebook brings up another problem, because individual Facebook pages shouldn’t spam their followers too much. 2-3 updates per day is acceptable, but more than that can lead to irritation and people leaving the page again. So we will probably have to land on a compromise where the page owners decide if their audience is interested in the chat and then publishes the advertisement. It could be done as a calendar event which is spread via the network.

These are at least some of the thoughts that I have had after the session. I would very much welcome views from followers of commissioners and EC pages on Facebook, especially to get an idea of the ambition level. it would also be great to hear from colleagues and contractors who run EC related pages on Facebook!

//Anne

Pictures from the chat session by Pietro Naj-Oleari/European Parliament: (more chats on the EP Flickr account)

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