Euro politicians take on social media

Politicians are regularly accused of being distant, of taking no interest in the opinions of their voters. And certainly the representatives in the European Parliament have a limited scope of engagement – each of the 99 German MEPs represents an average of 828,000 citizens. Making contact with them seems to be a bit of a long-shot at first glance. But it is possible. With the help of social media, politicians can speedily disseminate information tailor-made for their users, and can potentially reach more than half of their constituents – according to a study from the German IT association Bitkom, over 60 percent of Germans keep up with politics via the Internet.