(8/12) In March 2016, I moved to Brussels to do an internship with the European Parliament’s social media team. Social media for large intergovernmental organisations was still in its infancy then. We had fun, posted cat GIFs, we were even on Snapchat. In my first week there, I rapped on our snap story. Thankfully that video is lost to the ether… My mom and my law school friends did not think I had a *real job*. 💼
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(9/12) 2016 was also the year of the #Brexit referendum Tr*mp’s election. It was the beginning of a new era for politics on social media. The Cambridge Analytica scandal meant that people started losing trust in these platforms, while law-makers buckled up and tightened rules on political advertising. Higher-ups started paying more attention to what the social media teams were doing, and at only 23 I found myself giving trainings on how to use Twitter to people wayyy above me. 🐣
(10/12) In 2018 I went back to University, joined a political party and started campaigning for the 2019 European Elections. When COVID hit in 2020 I was between graduating from my Masters in Eastern European Studies (🇺🇦Slava Ukraini🇺🇦) and doing yet another internship, this time with a Member of the European Parliament. Doing social media to get votes was definitely different from communicating on behalf of an institution...
(11/12) Since 2023, I work for the European Commission (again). I mainly do community management, which means I spend a lot of time in the comments. It’s not always the easiest place to be. I’ve deprioritised my personal social media, and I’ve had to learn to manage my relationship to addictive apps and algorithms. Geopolitics play a bigger and bigger role for the EU, and that reflects on social media too. More people are asking themselves: can we still rely on the US and American tech giants? 🌎
(12/12) So that’s it for my little summary on a 10-year social media career in international politics. I like to say it’s a career that grew up with me. If I were a comic book character, this would be my origin story.
PS: My mom does think it’s a real job now.
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@hpod16 I wish I could read your beautiful thread as a blog post. May you share some of your blogs? What were they about?
@everton137 oh no, no no, We don't want to dig up my cringy blogs from my teen years and early 20s. 😆 💜 Let sleeping dogs lie - and let tumblr blogs fade into the ether of old internet servers...
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