Social media in the European Parliament

Although there are a number of studies looking at the use of social media in what can be called ‘formal politics’, there is still a lack of comprehensive accounts of how politicians perceive social media. We must therefore examine carefully the experiences politicians make in specific environments and understand how practices are shaped. In other words, “scholars should not take the technological affordances of social media for granted – but should carefully consider the way in which users understand, appropriate and experience social media” (Barassi & Treré, 2012: 12). In this regard, ethnographic methods can contribute to better understand perceptions and uses patterns of social media technology, focusing on the recursive intertwining of users and technology in practice as communication emerges from the performativity of social media as interacting with actors’ practices. Such an approach demonstrates the importance to look at “social media imaginaries” in order to understand how political actors make sense of social media and how it drives their usages of such digital tools. Indeed social media practices are not phenomena that take place exclusively online but are rather consecutive with and embedded in other social spaces (Miller & Slater, 2005:5). This presentation aims at interrogating a specific form of everyday politics on social media, from the point of view of social actors who work in a political institution. The case study is the European Parliament, an institution that gathers people from the 28 EU countries. It will highlight how social media participate in shaping the “Brussels Bubble”, an unusual type of community that goes beyond institutions to include other types of actors, such a lobby groups, activists, members of NGO and political parties, etc. In doing so, the presentation will show the richness and complexity of user practices in relation to social media and discuss methodological questions, such as access to fieldwork and interpretation of data