EU Scream
Politics podcast from Brussels
EU Scream
Political Communication in the New Age of Spectacle
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Sedate and unflashy international institutions are in a struggle for attention in this new age of spectacle. In a step change aimed at addressing the challenge, the European Commission, the EU's executive body, last year paid a group of content creators around €100,000 for making videos about free movement across national borders under the Schengen Agreement. This month it emerged that the European Council, which organizes EU leaders' meetings, will invite social media influencers to summits starting this summer. The initiatives are acknowledgement that the dynamics of political communications have changed with the rise of social media, which demands high levels of emotionality and relatability. In this episode, Peter Van Aelst, a professor at the University of Antwerp and a prominent media commentator, shares his findings on the increasingly demonstrative tone used by politicians over the past 15 years. Negative emotions like anger are prevalent—especially among radical right and hard-left parties. But the findings also show politicians using more positive messaging as a strategy to foster goodwill as well as capture attention. One example is Bart De Wever, the Belgian prime minister, who has become a sensation on Instagram by posting videos with his cat Maximus. That has helped soften his hardline Flemish nationalist image. At the level of the EU, questions remain about the authenticity and effectiveness of paid influencer content and about whether it could eventually veer into propaganda. There also are calls to regulate outside influencers to ensure they aren't being paid by hostile actors. Yet another concern is reliance for distribution of influencer content on opaque US platforms owned by multinationals like Meta and X that are aligned with the Trump administration's hostility to European digital standards and regulations.
No migrants more in.
SPEAKER_08No Europe without Christianity. An alliance also with Russia.
SPEAKER_12Welcome to EU Scream, the podcast that guides you through stories coming from the EU. We talk about the news a bit differently, and with people who really know what they're talking about. I'm James Cantor. This is episode 128, Political Communication in the New Age of Spectacle, with Peter von Alst, professor at the University of Antwerp, and a founding member of the Movements and Politics Research Group on relationships between media, politics, and citizens in the digital age. So, Peter, this uh battle for attention, media attention, it seems to be getting even more intense if that were possible. Very broadly, what is happening?
SPEAKER_06So everybody is online and everyone wants a piece of the attention. Uh, but everybody is scrolling around on his phone, and you have a hundred things coming by. And so it's very hard to attract, especially young people, attention. And therefore, we uh we pay a lot of uh attention to a few people. Donald Trump, for instance, is very good, uh perhaps not in persuading people, but in grabbing their attention. So we look at his model to say, okay, can I also, as a as a politician or as a journalist, or as an organization, grab also some of that attention because that has become so uh difficult. We're not living in the information age, we're living in the attention age. So information is everywhere. You can ask AI, and AI will give you the answer. That's easy. But grabbing attention with what you do or what you say, that has become very difficult.
SPEAKER_12One thing about this is that there's this deep concern that emotionalizing, emotional content is the thing that really works to succeed in this attention economy as you've been describing it. But there's also this sense that emotionalizing or emotional content weakens trust in democracy. You hear this all the time from people, uh, especially in the in the European institutions, they don't like emotional content.
SPEAKER_06So, what we see in our own research, and that is mainly on Belgian politicians, over a period of 15 years, we see a steady increase of emotional language by politicians. So it used to be that the large majority of that communication was neutral, then you had some negativity and some positivity in there. Over the last 15 years, the emotional language has become the norm. So if you post something on social media nowadays, as a politician, it has emotional language in that. What surprised us a lot, what we were not anticipating, is that it's mainly positive emotions. So it's there's love Trump's hate, you could say, because, and this is also how our minds work, we have a negativity bias. That very negative tweet, uh, that very negative post, that gets into the news. The fight between a couple of politicians, that is what is newsworthy. But the majority is politicians asking, like, look at me, I'm doing this fantastic new thing, uh, and then we will respond with a heart to that. Respond with the heart. That's where you get this kind of emoji jamming, right? There's an inflation of emotions. And I see that especially among uh young uh students, my my my my children, they try to explain me why thumbs up is is not good. You need to you need to give a red heart when somebody says something. So there's an inflation of this positive language, which in a sense is good. It's so it's not all negative when we talk about politics. Yeah.
SPEAKER_12Okay, there's this positivity story, but there's also this combination of radical right parties with social media that is also a key part of your findings, at least when it comes to emotions like anger and fear, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So extreme right parties across Europe they generate a lot of anger. Their posts are often uh filled with anger, and the reactions are also filled with anger, mostly at immigrants, but also at other groups. Um and that anger. So I always say that social media works better for radical parties because there's this um, yeah, not being nuanced helps to get a lot of reactions. So, and if you're politicians on the one hand, on the other hand, social media is not that good for you. You see, you also see it on the extreme left. So saying, oh, it's all uh greed and uh let's fight back also works. Uh but a nuanced story like the anti-capitalism uh story. Yeah, yeah. That also works. So you could say that social media, to a certain extent, makes it a more level playing field, so that if you're a small radical left or radical right party, you can get more easily attention. While in the past you need to be an established organization, have connections with unions and whatever. Social media makes that more easy. At the same time, this can be, of course, as you also mentioned, very problematic. Because you can uh rally emotions and polarization and less about content than just about being angry.
SPEAKER_12Just to come back to the positivity, uh the positive emotionality, uh which you found is actually even more common in your research, uh this is the incumbents strategy, right? Yeah. Because uh they have they don't have to they don't have to rile people up, they just have to make people feel good. Why is it the incumbent strategy to be positive?
SPEAKER_06I think it's partly because you're in government and you're trying to do a lot of good. And you want people to notice. So you're saying, look at us, we change these roads, uh, we're giving this extra uh tax credit, we we we will help you with the energy crisis. Uh or just look at me, I'm here at this rally and I'm people show up. So, therefore, we also see it with radical parties that they sometimes have positive messages, like we had this demonstration against Israel and for Palestine, and we were with thousands of people. And then it's also a very joyful, positive like, look, we are mobilizing people. So it's there's a lot of self-promotion there that comes together with the positive emotions.
SPEAKER_12And in your research, I found this interesting, you came up with 37 emotional categories, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, um, that seems a lot, but that was the basis on which you kind of organized the social media posts in order to do this research.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. We had a lot of discussions among the researchers about what is emotional and what is not. So there were hours and hours of discussions, and then we looked at political content itself, and then we trained a kind of large language model to recognize these emotions. But uh, you would be surprised that you have a lot of uh going back and forth of what is compassion and how would you show compassion and what is joy and what is not joy, and so yeah, there was a lot of uh discussions going before to come to some sort of category to say this is positive, this is negative. It becomes complicated if you look at the reactions of people among it because you can be angry and and say, show a red heart, say I'm angry, so I support your angriness. It's a little bit messy to study it.
SPEAKER_12So, what explains why we've seen this rise in emotional communication on the part of politicians in in the last 15 years? Yeah. So entirely a social media thing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think mainly, mainly. I think being positive about yourself and being negative about so negative campaigning is an old thing. It's not not invented by social media, but you see the reaction right away. So I think there's also a learning effect. If you if I'm a politician and I post something, every time I get feedback. So you see what works. Still, it's very difficult to explain virality. Right, virality. Virality. You we don't know yet what will go viral. Although one politician is very successful cooking in his or her kitchen and talking about politics, and all the other politicians think, oh, that that is what works, and they try it and it doesn't work at all. Wrong recipe. Wrong. Well, there the authenticity comes in. You need to find something that fits you, that represents you, that you can say, this is me, and that works.
SPEAKER_12I mean, do you have an example in mind of let's say a politician who's gone viral with some sort of personal activity?
SPEAKER_06I think the most prominent thing at the moment is our prime minister, Bart Weber, who is going viral with his cat, Maximus.
SPEAKER_00The cat from Bartwever heeft eigen Instagram. Maximus.
SPEAKER_06So he has a cat in the Oval Office. Uh and in it's the Wedstraat 16 in our case. So in his working office, there's a cat. And the cat has now as many followers on Instagram as he has.
SPEAKER_05Maximus Pousse van the Wedstraat 16, metabana 300,000 followers on Instagram. Who belonged is the pous?
SPEAKER_06And the cat is kind of cynical, has a kind of cynical humor, makes jokes and remarks on what happens in politics. And people love it. And also people who don't follow politics normally react with ten hearts like, oh Bart, your cat, Maximus. Yeah. Happier for Papa, happier for Maximus. Everybody in Belgium knows Maximus, the cat of the Prime Minister.
SPEAKER_12And is Maximus a kind of inner voice of Bart de Weaver? Yeah. And so that cat reflects what it's like to be a Flemish nationalist who is also in charge of an entire nation, which at one point he wanted to split apart. Does the cat channel any of these contradictions within our so our prime minister is a funny person.
SPEAKER_06He has a real good sense of humor. Although he uh I also invited him in my class, and he's able to uh attract attention, but also with smart analysis, and he knows perfectly how it works. And so the cat is never too political, because then it would be obvious that it's his voice. But it makes a small remark or says, Well, why are all these politicians now for hours and hours here talking? Why don't they really work? So also a little bit critique on politics, but also sometimes just the cat walks around with a funny background noise or uh a good song. So, and you combine that with politics and with some humor. And from time to time, when the prime minister is not giving out uh statements about negotiations that are going on, journalists even look at the cat to say, yeah, but Maximus said that. That might mean we're close to a deal.
SPEAKER_04My name is Maximus Textoris Polter, commander of the Fields Legions, loyal servant of the one true Emperor Bartholomew's textor, and I will have a balanced budget in this life or the next.
SPEAKER_06So even when there's no real news, Maximus makes news. And again, tomorrow another politician thinks, oh, I need to start uh with my dog, and and then it will not work.
SPEAKER_12He's kind of a he's kind of a well-manicured figure. Yeah. Uh looks after his appearance, uh, famously lost a lot of weight, actually, before he became Prime Minister. And so uh a cat is quite a fastidious animal, looks after itself. So maybe there's there's kind of some overlap there with actually so he's found the right thing. So do we know who invented this? Do we know who told him to do this?
SPEAKER_06I think in it in Downing Street then there's also a cat, famously. Prime Ministers may come and go, but one resident has stayed the same. Larry the cat. And so the waiver told recently that he had that this idea in mind, but then he was not aware that it would become that popular. And of course, there's somebody making these uh small clips to put online, but also that person behind the scene is never in the media, doesn't talk about because do we know who that person is? Journalists know, but but the person smart enough does not come forward like I'm making these movies. No, that's so it seems real. It seems like real cat videos.
SPEAKER_12So there are other media trends, and this gets a little darker. This is not cat videos. Yeah. For example, Iran and the US have been packaging their war as if it was a form of entertainment. Iran is using viral Lego videos that mocked Israel and its ally, the US. They showed Trump using the Iran War as a pretext to distract from the Epstein files.
SPEAKER_14We got the welcome ready body bags that the door.
SPEAKER_12Each player has a controller and you use a monitor and you play tennis or golf, and this shows the Wii game characters, like the tennis and golf players, hitting their tennis and golf balls and striking targets. Spliced with images of like military explosions or strikes on Iran in black and white.
SPEAKER_06Where are we? Where are we? So, the social media channel of the White House, also for me, following this for years and years, it's almost seems like there are no more rules. So, because this is the official channel, this is not Donald Trump on Truth Social, this is the official channel making these videos, as you say. The best way I think to explain it is that they use the meme culture on the internet where you make fun of things, you play around, now you use AI with that, and they mix that completely with politics. And you get this mixture of the two, which leads to these weird videos you describe, but also there was one on Hollywood with heroes, and then mixed with real war images, and then Iran reacts with what they made on AI, making fun of Donald Trump. So, and you get this. We have an education in international politics and diplomacy, but yeah, where is the diplomacy? It's it's everything you see is it's a different game they play. And and when I say no rules, I mean you use AI as it suits you, you can be dishonest if that works. There was this famous incident where there was a somebody in custody, a black woman in protest against ICE, and then the White House made her cry.
SPEAKER_07This was a post from the White House's official ex account, and in it they post a photo of Nikima Levy Armstrong, who was arrested for interfering at church service in Minneapolis. Her hands are behind her back, and her face is in total distress. She's crying, there are tears running down her face in this image. The problem with the picture is that that's not the real picture of Armstrong after she'd been arrested.
SPEAKER_06And everybody and and and they asked the reaction of the person making that, and he said, Yeah, this is just a meme. Get used to it. We will keep doing that.
SPEAKER_07And this White House is saying that this is a meme. The issue at hand here is that unless you have seen the community note that is posted on X, which says that this is a digitally altered image, you may not know that this is not a real picture. And this is coming from the official White House account, which has three and a half million followers.
SPEAKER_06It was only when Donald Trump presented himself as Jesus there was backlash of his own people, and then they pulled it back. But backlash of other people doesn't matter because in the war of attention, they are winning. Everybody's looking at this. We are talking about this. So, in terms of attention, why would you care?
SPEAKER_12As well as entertainment strategy, there's also increasingly what's called full-spectrum propaganda strategy. This is a concept associated with an American professor called René de Resta. It's essentially combining uh official messaging with hidden networks such that state outlets can cite fake online personas and other stuff in order to do what is also called inauthentic amplification of whatever the state narrative may be. So here it looks like you've got state actors turning an online audience into a distribution channel larger than any one single state could kind of build on its own. So again, uh these are becoming very important means by which states communicate and authorities communicate.
SPEAKER_06Definitely. And everybody's, of course, it's changing so rapidly, and everybody's looking for the right term to label this. And so I'm not sure that propaganda is always the best term because it has this historic meaning to it. I more often talk about a permanent campaign. So the White House is not waiting for elections, it's permanently campaigning with less rules. And so Trump is a specific character. He he really does not care about the truth. I think most politicians still do, so therefore, I think we should be careful with exaggerating this model. I don't think it will work everywhere that you can just say whatever you want, and that there is no factual truth about that. It will not work in a European country, I think. That's a very optimistic note. That's that's very interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, or not to the same extent. Even a populist politician in in Europe will pay more attention to the truth.
SPEAKER_12There is the concept proposed by Guy Debord, a French theorist in the late 1960s that we're entering a society of the spectacle. That was the name of Debord's book. It was also made into a fairly experimental art film.
SPEAKER_11C'est le principe du fetishisme de la marchandise. The fetishism of the commodity, the domination of society by intangible as well as tangible things, attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.
SPEAKER_12And then by the 1980s, we get the 24-7 news cycle, and we start talking about how much of that coverage ends up distracting from real substantive issues. Such that by the time we get to the 2010s, we're talking about social media, which is where we kind of pick up the story with you, Peter, which is seen as adding to this phenomenon, accelerating it massively, because all of us now can sort of at least part, you know, well, not all of us, but some people can participate in the creation of this spectacle, making phenomena like post truth and propaganda shareable and go viral. Of course, there are other important thinkers. Here, well, important if you're into French theory, like Jean Bautriar with his concept of hyper-reality, where there's nothing even real behind the images. And then there's Peter Pomarentsev. Peter Pomarentsev, the Ukrainian-born British writer, who talks about how political messaging isn't there to convince you anymore that there is any kind of particular truth, but to destroy the possibility of any form of shared truth altogether. What do you make of these kinds of concepts? How do they fit in with your academic work, if at all?
SPEAKER_06Well, I think a lot of these concepts are helpful to see sometimes the bigger picture, a little bit taking some distance and see what's happening. And I also, years ago, I also used that that idea of the spectator uh society. We were not part of the campaign, we were watching the entertainment. And you could say politics always has been some sort of theater. So if you look at the British Parliament, how they behave in their sometimes old-fashioned way is some sort of theater, no? And and and and it was never that, it was all about substance, and the way you brought it, the way you made your argument or made fun of the opponent always mattered. But indeed, we have gone further and further. I'm not sure that this social media revolution is just another layer on top of that. Because of that, what you say, the user engagement, I think really changes the dynamic. As I said, politicians learn, and and you're not a passive spectator, you're part of it. And again, not that your comment is that important, but some of these comments and the group as a whole and how these people behave make the politician. So I think even Donald Trump was a bridge too far for the Republican Party, but the base helped him there. I think also Donald Trump learned from his base and from the reactions how much they hated journalists. Donald Trump himself did not hate journalists, it was the followers.
SPEAKER_12So so there is a there's a He's always worked very closely with journalists, especially when he was a New York City developer. He had very tight relationships.
SPEAKER_06Definitely, and he still watches a lot of television. So for him, it's still an important medium, but he has now a direct channel with his supporters, and these supporters make him bypass the media. So that for him, so I don't think there's one concept that fits all of this, but I do agree that the entertainment part is problematic, as we've seen in the war. At the same time, I don't believe that the theory goes that far that it's not about the substance. It's it's still a struggle of ideas. I do believe that. Of course, bringing the ideas in the right way, uh, and and and like Iran and and the US, there's a communication war. But at the same time, there's there's real fighting. So the bombs are dropping, people are dead. So you can't say, ah, this is this is not reality. So of course there's a basis of reality. Also in politics nowadays, uh, with with with uh populist parties and and what happened in Hungary, that is still a struggle of ideas, of about having the the right uh solutions for the future, but then of course the communication entertainment part comes over that. I mean, French theory is really fun.
SPEAKER_12You think and then it kind of, you know, it it hits a it hits a wall. Like you were saying, it's like, you know, Jean Baudriard, oh, there's nothing real behind the spectacle. Well, actually, there kind of is, is what you're pointing out. We've talked about this intensity of our media environment in which politicians and and institutions find themselves, and then there's the EU. You know, specifically the European Commission, which for so long has been the butt of criticism, like forever, for being the kind of er institutional communicator. Like, boring, completely unsuited for modern media. On the one hand, it's a fairly large multinational civil service, like 30,000 people. Usually civil services, or at least the individual members, are pretty invisible. But then on the other hand, the commission's been given this executive role within the EU system. It holds midday press conferences where it's de facto the face and voice of the European project. It has a budget of something like 100 to 150 million euros per year. They don't publish consolidated figures, so we don't have the exact amount to spend on communications. Yet it's routinely bogged down by institutional language and process, and it's always struggled to sell its messages, partly out of fear of offending this or that member state or creating euroskeptic sentiment. So, Peter, how acute is the situation for these kinds of institutions like the European Commission getting heard in this kind of media environment scene that we've been talking about?
SPEAKER_06Well, they're not a front runner in everything we discussed so far. That is clear. So it's a large institution, and they need to agree with so many partners, so that makes them slow. Donald Trump is a king, and a king behaves fast because he does not need other people to agree with him. I just have to say no kings, but okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. And then all the other people around him need to adjust their communication to the king. Usla van der Leyen needs everybody on board and then can make a statement. That, of course, is the opposite of how social media works. So that logic, the EU or the European Commission will never be a great communicator. They are really afraid to make mistakes. And that hinders fast communication, that hinders direction, and some of that creativity is lost in the bureaucratic process because everybody needs to agree, and and rather than getting a comment from their boss saying that that's not what we wanted, then they play it safe. And that mentality I see makes some people leave European institutions, and that is a big problem in our bigger struggle with Russia, China, the US. That I understand that uh something like the European Union works differently because you need to compromise, but it it works too hard that it makes us slow and it makes us lazy and it makes us risk-averse. That being said, I think it might change it. So in a couple of years, we will have somebody leading the European Commission who is very good at something, and they will find that and they will tweak that, and that will lead to like Barthewers Katz. It it will it will happen. It will happen. At some point, we will discuss it, like, wow, the European. But I think it's very personal what works, and it has to do with authenticity, and you can't ask Ursula von der Leyen, please do this or that.
SPEAKER_12So we can also optimistic that these heads of state and government who end up selecting the European Commission president one day are going to parachute somebody into that job who will be able to do this kind of telegenic medium.
SPEAKER_06Or it works the other way around, they say, oh, we have nobody, then they select a boring person, but that so Hermann van Rompe, as you know.
SPEAKER_12Well, he was the head of the European Council, the first one, the first president of the European Council, former Belgian Prime Minister, famously called as charismatic as a damp rag by Nigel Faromage. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question that I want to ask the question that I want to ask, who voted for you? And what mechanism?
SPEAKER_06He was actually pretty competent. The Americans liked him. Herman van Rompe, eh? He was definitely very competent, but everybody thought, oh, this is the most boring guy you can choose for the job. I'm sure that a few smart people around him in nowadays would find something that makes him, because he's so boring, would make him go viral on TikTok. You know? So it's it's not that you have to have specific qualities that makes you stand out. It's sometimes unpredictable what will work. And it's clear that in the case of Ursula von der Leyen, there's not something there. Otherwise, we would have found it and they would have used it.
SPEAKER_12On the one hand, there's her character, on the other hand, there's this idea that she needs to get consensus before making statements. And, you know, you you were voicing the idea that we should be somewhat sympathetic there. But I must say that she has been trying to break through in terms of making her own statements and branding herself, but it's not working very well. No. It's really not working very well. You know, she's trying to inject emotion. She says things like, Long live Europe.
SPEAKER_08Long live Europe. Thank you so much. Long live Europe. Vive l'Europe! Viva l'Europa! Long live Europa.
SPEAKER_12Almost at the end of every important big marquee speech, no other European Commission president uh that I know of has ever done that. But it feels a bit flat somehow, since she's maybe not really elected or and she's been lately injecting quite a few superlatives about Europe in into her speeches, but that feels a bit forced as well. Yeah. And then she can be untruthful. For example, when she signed last year's trade accord with Trump at Turnbury in Scotland, where the EU accepted this 15% tariff, she had temerity, if I can put it that way, to say this had nothing to do with US pressure on Europe over Ukraine. And this is after she did a thumbs up with Trump in Scotland. I mean, you couldn't imagine worse optics. And she continues to, you know, say, oh, we got this great deal, we got the best deal.
SPEAKER_06So the fact that she was untruthful, politicians have done this always. This is called strategic communication, framing, whatever. So of course she wants to be popular in herself, etc. But is that really necessary? In the sense she's not elected by the public, you know, if she can persuade the other head of states, if she can persuade the journalists that follow her on a daily basis, that's probably good enough. And so she will never be really popular. And okay, again, you can make that a selling point in yourself. Like look at Ursula van der Leyen, a traditional politician in these weird days. Perhaps that can be your selling point, the fact that you're not playing the game. So that would be my advice to her.
SPEAKER_12I hear you, exactly. I really that really resonates with me. I mean, i when she's saying these things, when she's trying to play this modern media game, it's a bit forced. It it comes across as more selling than actual governing. And then there's this other very interesting change going on within the European Commission. It's now using paid influencers to make vertical videos for Instagram on phones and other platforms. And I want to just check something with you though. Is it generally true that influencers, these social media influencers, these vertical video influencers are massively more cost-effective than placing adverts on radio and TV? Given the sheer volumes of people following these influencers or content creators, I mean, the numbers are huge. So does that kind of by definition mean that it's good value?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. That's a tricky question. So I think it's quite normal that as a European Commission you also work with influencers because in that battle of attention, the influencer has the attention. He or she can reach 10,000 youngsters. How else would you reach 10,000 youngsters? They don't watch the news, they don't read the newspaper. So you have to go via these influencers. I don't mind that the European Commission says we need to sell Europe, the idea of Europe, that states work together, build a compromise via these influencers. But the effect will be limited to a certain campaign if you pay them. What you want is actual influencers, people who do this on a daily basis who say, I'm defending Europe. I think Europe is worthwhile. Like people in Hungary fought for that campaign against Orban because there was something at stake. And otherwise, it's a short-term campaign that ha can have a little effect, it can spark something, perhaps. So I'm not against it, but I would not overestimate what it can do.
SPEAKER_12Real politics, real stuff at stake, democracy in jeopardy, if you get real influencers to talk about that kind of thing, then you probably have some pretty compelling content. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What seems to have happened in terms of you could call it a pilot project, the European Commission. Uh, a paid influencer campaign was held, as I understand matters, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Schengen area last year. Schengen, which abolished internal border checks in much of Europe and now covers 29 countries. So you can see all these videos at the Schengen Anniversary website, link to those in the show notes, or you can track a bunch of them down on Instagram. Less than a minute, kind of Instagram type reels. Most seem to have done three videos for that fee, and most of the influencers seem to have acknowledged that this was paid content or an ad in the caption area below the video. And I guess some people do read that. I mean I I I don't know who does, um, apart from people like me. Uh most of them, I've checked some of them, they were getting, you know, between several hundred to several thousand likes. And that does seem to be something of a measure of success in a world where the the currency of social media is not necessarily authority or accuracy, it's engagement numbers.
SPEAKER_06I would hope that it's a little bit more than just counting likes, and that you have some metrics that also say, okay, people really engaged with it. They shared it with their friends and added something there. That okay, then it means something. Just the like, okay, yeah. What does it mean? Especially as an institution for the EU. And they're they're now really focused to to get more people liking what they do because that's compared to other institutions and other people, that's really low. So I I understand that they say we need to boost that, but the real impact is okay, do you really connect with some of these uh new audience that you want to reach?
SPEAKER_12There's not much mention in the videos, as far as I could tell, of what some would say is the existential issue here with Schengen. The prolonged reintroduction of temporary internal border checks by several member states after COVID-19 that they've ostensibly kept in place because of security concerns and apparently internal migration. So Schengen is in jeopardy, but you don't really get that sense from these videos. They're they're they're really just celebrations of travel and you know, young kids kind of being able to go on holiday or spend one night on one side of the bed that they're in in the hotel in one country, and if they shift to the other side of the bed, they'll be in another. That kind of thing.
SPEAKER_06But the question is do with what would you compare it? If I would compare it to old traditional advertising, it would be a picture of Ursula van der Leyen in a newspaper across Europe with a slogan I love Europe. It's not very substantial either. So advertising is superficial always.
SPEAKER_12I guess the journalist in me is like, you know, if you want to make Schengen really interesting, then talk about the scratchy bits. Talk about the difficulties. Yeah. Talk about how I'm a kid, uh, I'm angry because the Germans keep putting up, you know, border controls. Yeah. And I'm angry at the Germans for doing that, because I love Schengen. Yeah. The bit that's missing from these videos, of course, is I'm angry at the Germans, you know, because the Commission can never do that. And to me, that's that's where, you know, I get a bit frustrated with them.
SPEAKER_06But of course, it's not because I say that these social media strategies, that there should not be classic journalism and that Ursula van der Leyer should give a two-hour interview to the main newspapers in Europe talking about that. And I should be able, you and I should be able to read all of that. But that will not reach the majority of the population. Again, referring back to our prime minister who plays with his cat on social media, but then he gives a speech of two hours somewhere in the Netherlands about his vision on Europe. And both should be there. And then there should be a third, which is the critical interview, where he gets uh back and forth with a journalist. We should have a broader toolkit of information rather than a more narrow one, one or the other.
SPEAKER_12And indeed, I mean, just to take Ursula von der Leyen again, I mean, uh there's widespread criticism of her reluctance to engage with critical journalists and the city. And that happens more and more appearances.
SPEAKER_06That happens more and more with political leaders. They they it was always, oh, they want to be in the media the whole time. Now they strategically stay away. Also, our prime minister does something on social media, then gives the two-hour speech. But in both cases, he's completely in control. And they sometimes avoid the annoying journalists. And I think it's also critical. But again, Joe Biden also did that. So there are a lot of politicians that we call very democratic and role models, but also they uh avoided the the media.
SPEAKER_12So so what we're just what we're talking about here is all these uh new technologies and social media in particular becoming unhelpful kind of substitutes for proper accountability to the public.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. To put it differently, there's nothing wrong with social media as long as you still do the long interview.
SPEAKER_12There was big resistance within the commission to doing this internally, even this pilot project with Schengen, the main concern being not being able to control the message. But that resistance seems to have been assuaged, it seems to have been dealt with by the influencers being obliged, either formally or informally, I'm not sure about that, to run their videos by the commission for a final check. So again, do you have any further thoughts on this sort of model, especially by institutions?
SPEAKER_06Well, it's it's it's clearly a borderline where they're with trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn't work, we can critique it. But if it works, yeah. So I understand that in this environment, people are trying to see what works. It is this is a New It's a new game. And a lot of people are learning. The problem is that hopefully the account of the White House will never be the example, although it's successful in a way.
SPEAKER_12One of the other concerns is the unforeseen consequences, for example, if an influencer later ended up saying the opposite. Saying the opposite, but also committing a crime or getting into trouble with the law. And then the choice of that person being seen as just immensely bad judgment. And this whole uh idea bringing this person kind of bringing the European project into disrepute. I mean, I so I think they're all.
SPEAKER_06And so people notice this, and that and and you make a fool of yourself. So there's clearly a lot of dangers or or of people reading a book about the European Union next to the pool, and nobody would believe that that person would actually read the book about the European Union next to the pool. So sometimes it has it makes no sense and then it doesn't work. So it's not just about finding people and I'm paying them some money to do a clip. It's finding what works. What is a selling point of Europe? They should think about that and then think about the people that could be influencers, and perhaps these are not the traditional paid influencers.
SPEAKER_12You know, all of this is supposed to work because it's emotional, authentic, da-da-da. Uh and that's the kind of content that gets prioritized by the new gatekeepers, the social media platforms. But that's not the end of the story. Here, the big US platforms see some European Commission content as problematic politically. And this is complicated stuff because some of this is American platforms blaming European media rules and European advertising rules, giving them almost a pretext for not allowing that European content to be shared widely. Specifically, Meta announced last October that it would suspend all political and issue-based ads on its platforms in the European Union, ostensibly because of a European regulation on political advertising. And then the European Commission no longer pays to promote on X on Elon Musk's platform, based on the idea that we should not be giving this guy money, given how critical, you know, just outrageous Musk is about Europe, you know, calling it Nazi and all of these things that Musk does. So as to TikTok, the European Commission doesn't post there because of these concerns about China. So you can talk about making content, but then there's the distribution part of this.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And that distribution part is highly problematic. So I perhaps we should have started the whole conversation with that. These are multinationals that earn a lot of money, don't have clear accountability, and they use algorithms that we don't have transparency with. So the whole model is flawed and from a democratic point of view highly problematic. So that that is that is my starting point. So still it seems that we have no choice that to play around. And I think what Europe does in terms of regulation is good. It's not perfect, but it's much better than in the rest of the world. So I think this is one of these moments in history that Europe proves relevant because we need to regulate these companies. And related to Meta's abolishment of these political ads, perhaps this is biased by my Belgian point of view, but we had Belgian political parties spending millions on Meta ads, more than in any other country. And that was just very bad, also for the image of politicians. But they were in a game like, ah, if they spend money, we also need to spend money. And more and more money was going to American multinational. The extreme left party had troubles with that, but they also were a big spender on Meta. So that is, it was almost ridiculous. So I think that is a good thing. On the other hand, it makes us it's a good thing that uh that's been uh abolished by Meta itself. By Meta itself, forced by the European regulation. Well, that's what they say. Yeah, because they wanted more transparency. I I worked with the Meta ad library. For me, as a researcher, that was very interesting to see ah, so that political party had 10 different versions of that ad in different regions of the country. So for me, there was already some transparency, but they said we need more transparency on that. And then Meta said, okay, actually, we don't make that much money out of these political ads, and it gets a lot of uh yeah, critique. So let's let's stop it. So I think for them, in their economic model, there was not that much to gain. So it's it's it's cat videos are much more interesting than political videos. So interesting. When you mix the both, it might be really good. But so it's it's it's it was that rather, I think, than the regulation in itself.
SPEAKER_12Meta just didn't want to deal with the blowback. Yeah, yeah. Is there any consensus yet? Or or what's your point of view on whether these influencers should be regulated as media or not, as traditional media? Uh you know, i my understanding is that political influencers currently fall outside of the scope of this 2024 law on transparency and targeting of political advertising. Um, it requires online and offline ads to be clearly labeled to indicate, for example, who paid for them their costs. Political influencers are not, they don't kind of fall under the scope of that law. There is talk of a new Digital Fairness Act where they could be kind of more regulated. What are your thoughts on regulating this kind of content? I mean, there's as a journalist, I'm like, hang on a minute, I don't like the sound of regulating uh content creation. On the other hand, when you see the power of these political influencers and the fact that they can be paid and then get the eyeballs of so many millions of people that can change political outcomes, such as in Romania in that election, where uh the Russians are thought to have used influencers to steer the election towards a victory for a Kremlin-friendly candidate. That election then got subsequently cancelled.
SPEAKER_09With around 9 million TikTok users, out of a population of 19 million, the country saw its November 24 election overturned over allegations of Russian meddling via the social media app. During that campaign, far-right candidate Kalin Giorgescu rose to the first place, fueled by an explosion of favorable content. Moscow, however, has denied allegations of manipulation.
SPEAKER_12That was a big warning bell about the power of this system. So, on the one hand, regulation of content creation or something like journalism or a little bit like journalism, don't like it. On the other hand, hang on a minute, democracy is at stake. What are we doing not regulating this?
SPEAKER_06It's a very tricky debate, I think. It's and I also have mixed feelings about it all because how would you regulate and do we have a definition of what an influencer is? We don't. And you say you reach millions of people, but what if what if I'm a popular person here in in Antwerp and I reach thousand people with my personal political views? Should you regulate me? I don't know. So also the example of Romania was somebody who wanted to go into politics. So for me, that was more a politician than a than an influencer. So there's a lot of gray zone there, and it's I think it's very hard to regulate. But at the same time, you're right. So we need some sort of framework at least where we can work in. But as you say, yeah, these companies have too much power, they're not transparent, and then we have foreign governments like the Russians influencing these these elections. So one of the solutions we have not talked about is uh investing in traditional journalism, of course, because it often happens there where people lost their trust in traditional journalism or in traditional politics, and then it creates a void that others jump in and that social media jump in. So more than ever, I tell my students please watch the news from time to time. Sit with your parents in the sofa and watch this slow news where they explain again Israel, Palestine, how was it again? How did it start? Like that some of that context in the weekend from time to time, use the newspaper. What our research also shows is people learn very little from social media, and this is more my more pessimistic side. So, research after research, we see that people learn very little from social media. So sometimes I also think don't spend all your attention there because it's not there where you make the real difference. So, oh yeah, have you seen that? Yeah, yeah, I saw it. And then you ask a few questions about it, and people can't remember. So there is something structurally problematic with the media, but it goes so fast, there's information overload. You you see 20 messages, the attention span is so short. I sound really, really old-fashioned, I know, but I think it's more important than ever. And it seems that some students get it, and I also, yeah, journalism is in the center of the debate about democratic erosion, which is good. So, yeah, the whole struggle about what is happening now makes journalism more important than ever.
SPEAKER_12That's it for this episode. EU Scream is nonprofit journalism and is produced in association with the Brussels Times. It's your support and your feedback that helps us delve into this new darker era in our politics, into how the EU should be responding, and into the thoughts and experiences of people who really know what they're talking about. Small donations to large ones, that's all incredibly appreciated. It also helps when we get a five-star rating at Spotify or a review at Apple Podcasts, and passing on episodes to family, colleagues, friends, that's yet another great way to show support. For more details and for more EUScreen, do please visit Brussels Times.com and look for the podcast. Thanks for listening.