EA Comms Strategy 2025
By Marta Cillero Manzano, Billie Dibb, Noemi Pittalà
Over the past decade, our view and position about social media has been that of recognising it as a powerful tool for social change, advocacy and mobilization. We’ve actively used platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram to raise awareness on global issues like climate change, human rights, gender equality, and racial justice; but also to engage directly with supporters, providing real-time updates, calls to action, and campaigns for fundraising or lobbying and to facilitate global solidarity by connecting activists, organizations, and communities across borders.
Social media has not only transformed how individuals interact but also redefined how political engagement and activism unfold. Movements like Black Lives Matter, Fridays for Future and the Sunflower movement have demonstrated the power of online mobilization in shaping real-world outcomes, and in times of authoritarianism, social media has allowed buried voices to be heard.
While recognizing its ability to amplify marginalized voices, mobilize movements, and advocate for social justice, the largest social media platforms pose increasing risks, including misinformation, privacy violations, amplification of inequalities, and corporate control. These challenges have been exacerbated in recent years, and after the US elections in particular. The rapid spread of false information through unfact-checked posts or AI bots, especially on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, poses harms to public health (e.g., anti-vaccine rhetoric), elections (Cambridge Analytica scandals, apparent Russian interference in Georgia and Romania), and already marginalised people. The monopolistic and for-profit practices of major tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google create further extractive and ethical problems; the environmental impact of data centers and the energy consumption of social media platforms; the exploitation of workers, especially in the global South where many workers are employed in app development or content moderation at extremely low wages; nonconsensually extracting users data and opaquely selling them to third parties, in some cases furthering human rights abuses such as facial recognition software to persecute Uyghur people in China; and the censorship and algorithmic biases, where we directly experience how social medias are quickly censoring content that does not align with the views of the men in charge, including EAs own content, and particularly content from activists in authoritarian contexts. We’ve reached a point where our main news & communication sources completely oppose the values of democracy.
How can we ensure that digital commons are democratic and aligned with the values of equity and free expression, what happened to John Perry Barlow’s promised social contract of Cyberspace?
For a start, we’ve decided to review our positioning and use of social media platforms, in order to make sure that, as much as possible, the use we make of them are aligned with our political positioning in regards to big tech, media literacy, the right to information, protection of rights and democracy.
The digital landscape is at a turning point. The major social media are not the utopian tool of communication & transnational connection they once promised to be but a contested space between corporate control, social movements, and institutional regulations.
We need to inhabit other spaces, challenge ourselves, and restart a real dialogue. We cannot simply denounce the toxic dynamics of mainstream platforms without actively seeking alternatives that align with our values, that offer user transparency, and have collective ownership. We believe that it’s time to stand more vocally and actively, to support platforms advocating for greater accountability from tech companies, better regulation, and individual digital rights, and to utilise alternative spaces. In particular, we want to drive our audience to safer spaces where we have more ownership, like our newsletter and website, platforms that also allow us to provide them with better curated content and free of censorship. We are also making a shift towards other types of social media platforms, moving away from X since January 2025 and entering the spaces of Bluesky and TikTok. We are aware that transitioning is difficult, especially from a space like Instagram, which can allow us to reach a wider and more diverse audience. However, we believe it is necessary to take a stand. We hope this move encourages other users to consider platforms that adhere to EU regulations and align with European values, promoting a more democratic and culturally open digital environment.
Challenges and Future Outlook
We actively advocate for the role of social media in fostering democratic engagement. Social media can help citizens participate in political discussions, express dissent, and hold governments accountableHowever, we have to recognize the risks to democracy, such as the rise of authoritarian regimes using social media for surveillance, censorship, or spreading propaganda.
We advocate for regulation of social media platforms to ensure they are not used to undermine democratic processes or human rights. In particular, we call for the creation of clear policies on:
- Content moderation to reduce harm (e.g., hate speech, misinformation, and extremism).
- Algorithm transparency to ensure that algorithms do not disproportionately amplify harmful or divisive content
- Youth protection measures to safeguard users’ privacy, data and access to harmful content.
- Recognise and support the rise of digital activism, where social media has become an important tool for grassroots campaigns, especially in repressive contexts where physical protests may be too dangerous. Social media helps activists organize, share information, and resist oppressive governments.
- Support cybersecurity measures for activists to protect them from digital surveillance and hacking by authoritarian regimes.
Following this road map, by end of-2025 we envision European Alternatives to be:
- Meta-free.
- Using new platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon or Pixel Fed as the platforms for direct political debate and activism.
- Present on TikTok for engaging young people and activists with educational video content.
- Issuing newsletters as the primary communication channel for longer and more in-depth reflections.
- Using LinkedIn for networking, professional opportunities and connections with various organisations.
- Having eliminated X, embracing a decentralized and more ethical communication approach
Further than the platforms we choose and their policies, education must adapt for the digital age. Youth must be empowered to ensure their digital rights and the health of the digital commons, coding is needed to understand the language of the platforms, critical thinking to hinder misinformation, and their voice must be included in the creation and regulation of the spaces they use.