Introduction
The lack of European Union (EU) legitimacy is often viewed, at least partly, as a communication deficit (Meyer, 1999; Andersen & McLeod, 2004; de Vreese, Banducci, Semetko & Boomgaarden, 2006; Spanier, 2012). Spanier (2012) defines the EU’s communication deficit as “the apparent impossibility for the EU of communi-cating with its citizens”. Lilleker & Koc-Michalska (2011) state that both “the Euro-pean Commission (EC) and EuroEuro-pean Parliament (EP) are keen to reduce the democratic deficit which is at the heart of critiques of politics at the European level.”
Meyer (1999) highlights the role of political communication in legitimating gover-nance. Michailidou (2008:348) argues that “for the EU institutions a first step towards democratic legitimation is to establish public dialogue between the EU sion-makers and the public, with the latter’s feedback incorporated in the deci-sion-making process.” Amongst the communication tools mobilized by the European institutions, Michailidou (2008:348) believes that the “Internet offers a viable alterna-tive to an offline, more conventional media-regulated communicaalterna-tive platform.”
The Internet has indeed been recognized as offering new means of political com-munication in democratic societies and extensive research has been conducted on the democratic potential of the Internet (Chadwick, 2006; Coleman, 2004; 2005;
Coleman & Blumler, 2009). Blumler and Coleman (2010:147) note that “with the emergence and evolution of the Internet, in its many shapes and guises, there has been a range of hopes and speculations about its redemptive potential.” At the Eu-ropean level, this belief is even stronger. Lilleker and Koc-Michalska (2011) empha-size the potential the Internet offers for legitimizing the European institutions.
This article proposes to assess whether new political communicative spaces are emerging in the European Union as a result of the use of internet, and more specifi-cally social networking sites (SNS), by political actors and civil servants within Eu-ropean institutions. What are the consequences for EuEu-ropean policy makers and what is the impact on European political communication? The aim of this chapter is to present the features of EU communication on SNS and to examine whether the European media ecology has been transformed by social networking sites, in
partic-ular the EU media relations. In order to identify, describe and analyze the main characteristics of EU digital communication, the article focuses on the three main European institutions (the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council). The research investigates whether SNS make it possible, or not, to overcome the communication deficit of the EU. First, the paper gives an over-view of the place of SNS within institutions, second it investigates the type of com-munication of European institutions on SNS. After focusing on civil servants and political actors in the European Commission and Council, the presentation turns to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for eventually highlighting the situa-tion of the “Brussels bubble”1 as a whole.
The paper adopts a multi-disciplinary approach that encompasses theories from political science, linguistic, sociology and communication studies. Its focus is on contexts, actors and practices, because “it is people who conduct European pro-cesses” (Adler-Nissen, in Busby 2011). This approach justifies the proposed research methodology: participant observation, interviews and discursive analysis. As a parliamentary assistant in the European Parliament between 2009 and 2012, it was possible for me to develop a deeper exploration of the institutional and political context and to understand better the relationship between people’s practices and their context. Following this ethnographic fieldwork, a number of interviews were conducted in 2012 with civil servants, staff and politicians in the three institutions.
The objective was to muster a very heterogeneous corpus which extends across dis-coursesonSNS as well as discoursesaboutSNS. Official and internal documents of institutions, texts emanating from SNS as well as interviews actors were incorpo-rated into the corpus.
Theoretically, this paper is a continuation of Oger and Ollivier-Yaniv’s research, whose work is at the crossroad of interpretive sociology and discursive analysis.
“This rapprochement was initially suggested by problems of research emanating on the one hand from the sociology of political and public institutions and according to an important place to actors’ discourse, and on the other hand from institutional discourse analysis” (Oger & Ollivier Yaniv, 2013). Such an approach brings actors and agencies into the study of the EU communication, focusing on meaning, under-standing and interpretation. The objective of this research is to appreciate the logic of practices and actors’ understandings of the EU communication on SNS in order to assess whether the EU communication on SNS is innovative.
Communicating Europe: the growing place of the Internet and social network sites
“Commission staff are increasingly called upon to communicate with the general public and stakeholders via a wide variety of channels. One recent development is
1 The Brussels bubble refers to the working settings inside and outside the European institutions.
that social media (...) are growing more popular for people-to-people communica-tion.” This is how “the guidelines to all staff on the use of social media” produced by the European Commission are introduced.2On the side of the European Parlia-ment, the assessment is similar: its strategic plan of communication 2011–2014 mentions: “Parliament’s presence on social media platforms offers a unique, cost-efficient opportunity for interactivity with citizens.”3
Furthermore in a resolution entitled “On journalism and new media – creating a public sphere in Europe,” supported by a majority of Members of the EP, the EP believes that “social media are particularly adequate for communication. (...) One must be where the conversation takes place i.e. Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks.”4There is no similar document for the European Council. In this institution, communication is viewed as “a service to specific users,”5i.e. journalists and bloggers, European and national civil servants, researchers and students. How-ever the three institutions are active on Twitter and Facebook. As recalled by Podkalicka and Shore (2010:100), the EU “has been particularly keen to mobilize on-line technologies, including popular social network sites.”
Digital social networks appear to offer its users a tool for expression which is both personalized and institutionalized, and therefore could fit perfectly in the communication apparatus of European institutions.6Moss and Coleman consider three communicative characteristics of the blogs which all relate to impression management (Goffman, 1959): “politicians attempts to seem like ordinary people”
(Moss & Coleman, 2008:9), they develop relationships with citizens which are live, spontaneous and direct, they are both “conversing with and listening to the pub-lic” (Moss & Coleman, 2008:9). All those three characteristics are today attributed to SNS by academics.7Therefore there is an injunction for actors, both in the EC and the EP but also – to a lesser extent – in the European Council, to use web 2.0 tools in order to interact with citizens and to create space for moments of delibera-tive democracy. “The use of social networking platforms, it is argued, can play an essential role in politics broadly by attaching visitors to these online presences to
2 European Commission,Social Media Guidelines for all staff, http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/docs/
guidelines_social_media_en.pdf.
3 European Parliament, “Action plan for the implementation of the Parliament’s updated communication strategy 2011–2014”.
4 Report on journalism and new media – creating a public sphere in Europe, 2010/2015(INI), 2/7/2010.
5 Interview 1.
6 The Communication officer of a Commissioner explains that on SNS’ accounts, the Com-missioner writes both “in her capacity as a comCom-missioner and as a person” (Interview 8).
7 About Twitter, for instance, Jackson and Lilleker write: “the most popular use of Twitter is for self-promotion (...)” (2011:87). “Through the promotion of self, MPs encourage voters to develop an empathy with the politician as an ordinary human being. (...) That tools such as Twitter offer an easy, convenient and controllable way of communicating such personal in-formation” (2011:90). See also Castells (2001),The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
the host and their political campaign” (Lilleker & Koc-Michalska, 2011).8Hence, Lilleker and Koc-Michalska call for a greater use of SNS. Boyd and Elison (2007) de-fine SNS as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.” This definition focuses on SNS9 such as Facebook. In this paper, the two social network sites that are the most commonly used by the EU are examined: Facebook but also Twitter. Twitter is “a microblogging site which allows users to deliver statements, thoughts and links in 140 characters to followers as well as a wider Internet audience” (Jackson & Lilleker, 2011).
Counting the different accounts of the institutions on Twitter and Facebook is not an easy task, especially as regards to the European Commission. In April 2012, on Twitter there were one main institutional account (@EU_Commission), 20 DGs Twitter accounts, 16 personal accounts of Commissioners, 16 personal accounts of Commissioners’ spokespersons, three personal accounts for spokespersons of the entire institution, plus a number of accounts for specific projects or services. On top of that, not included in the research, there are 27 accounts of national offices of the Commission as well as the official offices outside the EU. The communication of the EP as an institution is less diffused, with one main Twitter account in Eng-lish, different Twitter accounts for each official language of the EU as well as ac-counts of parliamentary committees and the press media team.10 But in this institution, there are also 766 MEPs11, politicians directly elected by citizens, amongst whom a majority is now using SNS according to different recent stud-ies.12Besides, the institution has developed a specific platform entirely dedicated to political actors of the EP, which is called EP Newshub and displays items that those actors have published on other platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook.13
8 See this press release by European People’s Party group in the European Parliament: “Web 2.0’ tools are a constitutive element of our contemporary societies and are crucial to enhance direct contact with EU citizens. Promoting and enhancing the use by MEPs of 2.0 tools con-tributes to getting Europe closer to citizens on a daily basis.”, October 1, 2010.
9 In this paper, social media, social networking sites and social network sites are used inter-changeably.
10 The different platforms are presented on the EP website: http://www.europ-arl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/00fd7b595a/Social-media.html.
11 At the time of writing, there are 766 MEPs, but there will be 754 MEPs elected at the 2014 elections.
12 Studies conducted by various research and public affairs consultancies, such as “EU Social Media Usage: New trends, new opportunities” in May 2013 (http://www.digitalpulse.eu/
EUDigitalPulse_2012.pdf); “Fleishman-Hillard’s 2nd European Parliament Digital Trends study” in December 2011 (http://www.epdigitaltrends.eu/) and “New MEPs survey: atti-tude towards information and communications tools” in September 2009 (http://www.web-ershandwick.eu/inline-docs/inline-survey.pdf).
13 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/the-secretary-general/en/activities/recent_activities/
articles/articles-2012/articles-2012-july/articles-2012-july-1.html.
Communication of European institutions on SNS:
political, institutional, or personal communication?
Ollivier-Yaniv and Oger (2006) define institutional discourses as those which are of-ficially produced by an individual or collective actor who has a legally registered position, whether he or she is a civil servant or a political representative. In other words, the institution circumscribes the status of the addressers,14the types of con-tents that are said or not, etc. As Maingueneau (2002) explains, “the speakers enter a pre-established frame which, generally, they do not modify”. On the contrary, SNS seem to alter and modify this “communication contract” (Charaudeau, 2002).
Charaudeau defines communication contract as follows: a speaker and an ad-dressee are bound by a reciprocal recognition contract that allows them to under-stand each other. This contract has the function of constraining the operating procedures of production and interpretation of the communication act, while at the same time allowing the participants to co-construct the meaning (Charaudeau, 2002). However, SNS aggregate and mix together, in a single space, not only the dif-ferent status of the addressers (e.g. a Commissioner may talk as a spokesperson for the institution and he may talk as a national politician) but also the addressers who have different statuses (i.e. a Commissioner and a spokesperson). In other words, the status of the issuer is not perfectly clear and is fluctuating: a representative of the institution for some messages, a representative of him/herself for others. Statuses of addressers vary, which impact upon communication itself, both in terms of types and contents. Denton and Woodward (1990, in McNair, 2011:3) characterize politi-cal communication in terms of the intentions of its senders to influence the politipoliti-cal environment. As they put it: “the crucial factor that makes communication political is not the source of a message but its content and purpose.”15Political communica-tion is argumentative. “It is, first and foremost, politics. It is about all the communi-cation efforts by those addressers who try to make people adhere to public perceptions that will orient their preferences” (Gerstlé, 2004:6).
Therefore the question here is whether communication of European institutions on SNS is political or not. If not political, communication on SNS can be institutional or personal. Pasquier (2011) defines institutional communication as a form of com-munication focusing on promoting institutions and public organizations. “It is not about emphasizing activities but the organization itself”, as “organizations need to position themselves and to build a positive image which makes it possible to achieve the objectives” (2011:77–78). According to him, institutional communica-tion is a form of public communicacommunica-tion. It is mainly focused on informing. A
person-14 I use the notion of «addresser» as it entails that speech participants are construed as roles.
In this respect, any statement is the result of enunciation and the elements intervening in this enunciation or communicative act are the addresser, the addressee, the content and the con-crete moment and place which make up the situation of enunciation.
15 The research highlights that communication of European politicians often follows edito-rial rules that usually apply to press writing, providing more and more factual analysis.
alized form of communication, on the other hand, relies on an expressive form of communication (Breton & Proulx, 2002). If we go back to Jakobson’s functions of language, this type of message “aims at a direct expression of the speaker’s atti-tude toward what he is speaking about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion, whether true or feigned” (Jakobson, 1960). On Facebook, communica-tion of EU institucommunica-tions is mostly informative and explanatory. On Twitter, the ac-tors in charge of communication who have been interviewed point out that there are:
“two types of Tweets: [firstly] political tweets, [which are] more interest-ing [and] more personal, in order to communicate on thinterest-ings that we can-not find in press releases, and [secondly] tweets to push information, that are more institutional tweets, to send people to the website.”16
The institutional messages follow “the lines to take that are disseminated among everybody, defensive points that are disseminated among cabinets, commissioners, spokespeople, so that there is a certain degree of coherence.”17The discursive analy-sis conducted in this research shows that these types of message are the most fre-quent ones on Twitter, on all the different accounts, in each institution. But the specificity of SNS is the possibility to juxtapose different types of messages – as il-lustrated by the example below. On one particular day, ten messages are published on the European Commission and European Parliament’s Twitter account that ad-dress various topics and, more importantly, swing between an informative and political register – following the definition that Gerstlé (2004) gives of political com-munication. According to him indeed, messages that encourage the follower to give his or her view are a form of political communication. In the example below, we find three political messages on the European Commission’s account. The EP also uses this type of editorial messages, mostly on Facebook.
However, those messages seem to serve communication purposes only: it is not clear whether and how the feedback of followers on SNS is taken into account by the institution.
These messages are what Ollivier-Yaniv and Oger (2006) call “institutionaliz-ing discourses” that can be carried out by any institutional addresser, and can be easily understood, but are removed from the specific contextual circumstances of the enunciation. These institutional discourses are updated on a permanent basis and are therefore always of-the-moment. Thus, even on contentious topic, such as ACTA,18the communication of the European Parliament is mainly de-scriptive and neutral: the account merely describes what is happening in the in-stitution.
16 Interview 2.
17 Interview 3.
18 ACTA – Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement – is an international trade agreement deal-ing with intellectual piracy around the word. ACTA is no longer a planned treaty for the EU as the European Parliament voted against.
Indeed, “the editorial line must respect political neutrality and share the plat-form equitably across the different political opinions expressed by Members of the European Parliament.”19Such a process consists of “smoothing of political content”
through two procedures that Oger and Ollivier-Yaniv (2006) have highlighted:
firstly the change of timing and secondly the deletion of partisan politics. The ac-count of the President of the Commission is the best illustration: it was first called
“European Commission”, then the name changed to “EC_live” and it is now
“BarrosoEU”. This account is particularly interesting:
“Throughout 2011 there was an awareness that this catch-all account would not do the trick for political communication anymore. That’s when we separated it and kept the EU_Commission for more general collegial communication, and factual information about the Commission as the
19 Interview 4.
central Twitter account for the Commission. But then [we] established in September 2011 the EC_live Twitter account. And the EC-Live Twitter ac-count has also the image of President Barroso which indicates already that it’s really something more presidential. So this is now about the political messages coming from the President.”20
However, building on the definition of Gerstlé (2004) and Pasquier (2011) of po-litical and institutional communication, those messages appear to be part of the sec-ond and not the first category following a process of “smoothing of political content” as described above.21Such statements tend to be decontextualized: they extend over the long time and are of universal capacity. Oger and Ollivier-Yaniv ar-gue that this type of timeless enunciation characterizes the institution rather than its representatives. In other words, messages survive the addresser who produces them. However, a comparative analysis of the Twitter accounts of the President and the Commissioners of the European Commission adds a nuance to what has been said. Some particular actors on rare occasions circumvent the rules of enunciation of the institutions. This is the case of Commissioner Andor who uses his Twitter account to sometimes broadcast political views different from the one of the institution, using
However, building on the definition of Gerstlé (2004) and Pasquier (2011) of po-litical and institutional communication, those messages appear to be part of the sec-ond and not the first category following a process of “smoothing of political content” as described above.21Such statements tend to be decontextualized: they extend over the long time and are of universal capacity. Oger and Ollivier-Yaniv ar-gue that this type of timeless enunciation characterizes the institution rather than its representatives. In other words, messages survive the addresser who produces them. However, a comparative analysis of the Twitter accounts of the President and the Commissioners of the European Commission adds a nuance to what has been said. Some particular actors on rare occasions circumvent the rules of enunciation of the institutions. This is the case of Commissioner Andor who uses his Twitter account to sometimes broadcast political views different from the one of the institution, using