Can we measure social media’s impact on the European elections?

With three months still to go, people are already talking about the European elections on social media.  But will social media actually make a difference?  And, perhaps more importantly, can we get beyond speculation and measure the impact of social media on the 2014 European elections?

In this post, I’m going to take a brief look at three areas where I think social media could potentially have a quantifiable impact.

Social media and voter turnout

During the 2010 US congressional elections, a research team led by the University of California in San Diego studied the voting behaviour of 61 million Facebook users.  The researchers looked at the impact of a “get out the vote” message delivered to voters via Facebook, as well as an “I voted” button that allowed people to inform their Facebook friends that they had cast their vote.  The study concluded that the Facebook campaign generated 340,000…