European Elections: Political and Internet 2.0

Last week I published a forum on European elections and the use of Social Media in elconfidencial.com

The reproduce here verbatim, if you wish you can see from the Confidential from here

European Elections and Social media

There are many benefits that the real Internet, the people, better known as Web 2.0 offers our political class. Unfortunately apparently seen so far in this campaign to the European Parliament, the policy is beyond the reach of technology.

The application of viral and concepts of limitation and evangelization of new users are not marked as a year ago during the American election campaign milestones that our political parties should try to continue to achieve new goals.

The benefits of squeezing the benefits of new technologies at the political level are among the many that could be noted:

"The viral spread the message: Ability to develop, create or be a generator of opinion that a prescriber can move masses and spread the message of a bidirectional manner with users, gathering feedback from themselves that enriches and feeds the message.

"The closeness: Any candidate may appear close, intimate and can demonstrate an ability to listen, interact, and worry about minority problems with predefined public and collective well that could not be serviced from traditional media.

"The dynamism: In the social belief of the low intensity of work, monitoring the daily life of a politician can show constant activity, work and intensity, creating a daily and very close link between political representatives and their constituents.

-Organization: A busy schedule of campaign events can have its climax when the people responsible for organization and public relations use the demographics of the people who follow us to coordinate and organize campaign events and inform our supporters of where and when we at each time asking for help whenever needed and raised the possibility of actively collaborating in its area of influence.

"The investment required and return: to spread the message in social networks, Twitter, forums and blogs is actually very cheap, like everything, is always very important that you get from a deep knowledge of the environment and if done well, profitability action will be twofold: we not only supporters and recipients of the message, but active people to help us evangelize and spread our message on the Internet. This is very difficult to exploit and that none of our politicians has been achieved to date in Spain. In the main Spanish political parties PP and PSOE, we have seen some "little shy and sometimes-successful attempts to create vehicles of influence and spread online, but could only point out two cases, which could be defined as" two wrongs in the country of the blind ".

In the People's Party figure Esteban Gonzalez Pons, communications secretary of the Popular Party who at one point early in 2006, had a blog of their own within a media, and from their Facebook account, of a very active, interacts, communicates and maintains relationships with over 4,200 friends have even created the "Facebook Fan Club Esteban Gonzalez Pons, with 790 followers. In the account of the Secretary of Communications of the PP is a promise: "Sometimes I do not have time to answer (e-mails, mostly), or at least to respond on time and to the extent that they deserve some messages, but I guarantee that It is given PERSONALLY profile and always read everything. You have my commitment. "

In my opinion, by far, the people who best understand the use of social networks. But would include looking for the easy applause of his unconditional, which undoubtedly has them-and rarely the analysis and discussion, as when a few months ago he complained that "the good of Federico Jiménez Losantos had said he was wasting time on Facebook" , for which he received dozens of messages from well animo.es channel impeller Facebook PP http://www.facebook.com/pp counts with 3,900 fans, curiously 300 less of maintaining himself.

In the Socialist Party, highlighted the work that many years ago Patxi López, very active with his personal blog and your Twitter account. We'll see if in a few months, once achieved the objective of the President's Office is still as active and understanding the medium. To their credit we must say that one of the few who has realized at a very early the importance and possibilities of Twitter, unfortunately not in its entirety since Twitter is by definition "the talk" and Patxi Lopez rarely have we seen to respond to the supporters who inquired about this medium. Have an unattended Twitter account, which claims only to spread your message without listening and showing that you hear is like opening a hot line to connect with your fans when the phone rings and nobody picks up the other side. Something a little disappointing.

The PSOE is also a very active channel on Facebook, with up to 5,600 fans. Even seeing how they work both spaces we see differences between the PP and PSOE. In the space of PSOE criticism is fierce and we do not know is whether it is permitted or not is moderating a little slack. Some of the comments of the users are really fierce with the site manager:

"Pillar has written Tamo Alcantara at 16:34 May 31

Yes agree with you, but with another government ... .. this has already shown what he can do in five years and has done nothing ... .. "

Nothing to do with the apparent mildness and moderation "? of the popular page.

Candidates for the European

Between the two main candidates to the European Parliament, Jaime Mayor Oreja and Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the game play is also raised in the social media. The popular Cyber followed in their movements by 2,500 people, while the socialist by 1,400, but the show of color negative movements against them. The group created "for those who detest Jaime Mayor Oreja," and its antonym "100,000 people who feel embarrassed by Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar" clearly show that in political election campaigns are both construction of identity, as to discredit of others.

UyPD and Social Networks

Forgetting the two main parties, it is interesting to see the work of UyPD since the last general election. Rosa Díez's party seems to have realized that the Web 2.0 "is the means" natural to communicate from a political formation that has no advertising budget and communication of the major parties. They have a group who have nurtured and pampered and use it as a useful communication platform, though at times have been exceeded in recent months becoming weary and carrying a nasty spam on users.

Tags: alejandro suarez, elconfidencial.com, Esteban Gonzalez Pons, Patxi Lopez, Spanish politics, Politics 2.0, pp, PSOE, Social Networks, tribune