Elections to the European parliament through the prism of social media as an electoral resource in European countries

This article examines social media as a relatively new tool of electoral and political activity aimed at creating a positive image of political parties and candidates to the European Parliament. In the modern world of politics it is becoming increasingly important due to such factors as the growing number of World Wide Web users, the decline in the traditional media popularity and the rapid spread of new media, as well as the tr ansformation of the Internet space into the platform for active political interactions. The key role in realizing the task of forming political image belongs to political institutions (parties, state bodies), politicians and social activists, as well as population representatives. The analysis of the efforts of various political subjects in the social media roughly demonstrates three functions of this new phenomenon: social media as a turnout increase tool, as a tool of increasing the recognition of candidates and parties by population; as a tool of informing the population about political and electoral processes in society. Currently, the main obstacle for the strategic research in this area is the fact that social networking technologies are rapidly developing, that embarrasses in making long-term prediction on its use. In spite of the absence of recognized criteria giving the opportunity to evaluate political activity in social media, the key efficiency criteria and success factor is so called “permanent presence” of electoral activity subjects in the Internet.