Social Media Communication in the European Administration. Case study: European Commission

Abstract

Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) have revolutionized the communication
strategies of public institutions in recent years, and communication strategies have understood the
different principles on which these new media have been built, compared to traditional means of
communication. The decisive role of Social Media on citizens proved especially by increasing the
proximity and accessibility of online public and political life not only contributed to the extension of
political information, especially on the participation and engagement of citizens in political life.
Beyond the huge openness of these social environments, encouraging users to participate in content
generation and public reactions, Social Media generates new social structures and, most importantly,
empowers the “people” to manifest themselves and to imposes a public agenda, to the detriment of
the agendas imposed by the institutional, political and media spectrum. Thus, Social Media has
opened a new innovative mechanism through which institution becomes a person, and institutional
communication becomes interpersonal communication. This important aspect has forced both
advertisers, large corporations, and even public institutions and political parties to reconfigure social
media communication strategies and to place great emphasis on personal relationships with the public
and less, or not at all, on communicating under institutionalized form. This study focused on
analyzing the Social Media communication strategy of the European Commission, from 1 January
2019 to 1 July 2019. Thus, we have analyzed the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that facilitate
Social Media communication, we have identified and analyzed the messages that generate high
engagement from users as well as the dominant reactions generated by the online audience.