European institutions : a new type of communication for a new era ? How Facebook and Twitter have been integrated into communication and media activities. The case of the Members of the European Parliament

While social media have been celebrated by the European institutions as tools to get closer to citizens, it is important to assess how their members, politicians and civil servants, have been using them in a context of political tumult. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative research, started in 2009 on the use of social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, by European institutions as well as political actors, this communication will focus on media practices both by Members of the European Parliament and journalists covering the EU institutions in Brussels. In doing so, it will contribute to the second stream of the Call for Papers, “communicating the new era”, in order to understand how the use of social media has been incorporated into work practices and whether this has brought some change in the relationships between politicians and journalists, and to a lesser extent between politicians and their various audiences (party members, activists, citizens, opponents, etc.). It will also question the place that social networks sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have taken in the media ecosystem, analyzing trainings provided by the two companies to Members of the European Parliament. The theoretical approach builds on sociology of use with an interactionist and constructivist perspective to allow for a rigorous and contextual analysis of communication and media practices by politicians and journalists. To do so, the research triangulates different types of methods, i.e. participant observation, semi­directed interviews and discursive analysis of published messages.