Millions of people from Galway to Gdansk and from Stockholm to Sardinia will be voting for the new European Parliament from 22-25 May. This vote will set the EU's direction for the next five years and influence legislation that will affect all of our lives. As the stakes are so high, we want to encourage as many people as possible to have their say and we want to invite you to get involved.
The European Parliament's web team has a wealth of lots of interesting and useful material about the elections. We want to ask for your help in spreading information and infotainment on social media. Here's a short overview of what we have to offer:
Thunderclap
Take part in our Thunderclap to spread the #iVote message. You can subscribe via Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. This will allow the Thunderclap website to send one message on your behalf one day before the election.
Neither your password nor any other data will be stored. The aim is simply to send one message about the election through lots of channels at the same time. The buzz should help raise awareness - maybe we can make #EP2014 a trending topic!
Social media toolkit
This simple brochure features everything you need to promote the elections. In just four pages, the PDF sums up key information and provides links to election info.
Check out our Facebook apps, including " I Am A Voter", which invites you to send virtual voting balloons to friends, and a "Taste of Europe" for all your election party needs plus loads of European recipes.
The toolkit also offers election infographics, links to MEPs and political parties on social media, articles on election law in all EU countries and lots more...
Election night blog
We will run a live blog on election night: http://electionsnight2014.eu/. It will offer news and posts in English from all over Europe. In addition there will be a visual display of Twitter data.
Based on data from tweets with the election hashtag #EP2014 and mentions of the Commission candidates, we will show the most common topics or most influential accounts.
Election results: website, Twitter, RSS feed
Another website? Yes, better safe than sorry. Some 100,000s of people will consult this webpage on election night.
The election results website displays results for 2009 and, as they come in, projections and results for 2014. These results will also be automatically tweeted via our accounts. The results for the UK and Ireland can be found on Europarl_EN .
A more detailed overview of everything on offer can be found in our press release.
Photo copyright European Parliament