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.