The Influence Index uses data and insight to score each Member of the European Parliament (MEP) on their political and social media influence.The Index looks at influence holistically across all EU policies, but also ranks MEPs based on their influence on six specific policy areas. The Index is not an assessment of MEPs’ work-ethic or loyalty to their constituents, but rather a data-driven analysis of the level of power the MEP currently wields. The rankings represent empirical measures and are not an endorsement of the MEPs or their positions. The current Index uses data from the 12 months preceding August 2020.

Together with Mared Jones and Chematus, we created the content, design and programming of the website to host all the information about the campaign.

The Influence Index Launch​

• 500+ visitors to www.influenceindex.eu during launch day on 13 October 2020​
• ​282 registrations and 154 webinar attendees from Australia, the US, Mexico, Russia and the EU (BE, HE, IR, NL, FR, DE, IT, ES, UK, LI, PT, HU).

During the 4 months before the launch, the #InfluenceIndex hashtag achieved:​

• 19.5M impressions​
• 3K mentions by 2.29K users​
• Including 5.75M organic impressions during week of launch

VISUAL COHERENCE

Buttons, graphs and image carousels were specially and independently designed to be consistent with the visual identity that we already published during the previous months on social networks. Each element of the web is fully responsive on other devices such as mobiles or tablets, and it follows a color code depending on the topic which also respects the palette previously used.

POP – UP INFORMATION

One of the greatest challenges of this project was how to include long lists of information gathered in Excel sheets in a way that even the person with the worst relationship with digital media would be able to find it easily accessible. With the help of plugins and a bit of freehand work, we managed to cleverly include all the figures related to the index (MEP, party and country level). The information appears by clicking on the images, scrolling with a hover through the maps and graphs, or selecting one of the tabs in accordion blocks.

For a better understanding, we crossed pairs of data while eliminating the information that is not being used, leaving the canvas free of unnecessary information.

Once the category has been selected, a record of the scores can be accessed by clicking on the images of the MEPs. The pop-up box displays the name of the MEP, the political party he or she is member of, the scores obtained in the three categories, as well as a direct access to the person’s official Twitter.

Thanks to the use of an external application called Datawrapper, we were able to manage the large amount of data obtained by analyzing the 705 MEPs across the 7 political parties. The scatterplots present in the different pages show us the score of the politicians according to the variables of political influence and social influence. If we hover the cursor over the dots, the details of this score are shown (name of the MEP, political party and scores), as well as the position of their teammates. The heatmaps show us the origin of the MEPs and the influence associated with them (how relevant each policy is in the different countries).

The process was repeated 6 times in order to cover each of the policies.

On the ABOUT page we can see a description of the project, the methodologies and the companies that have made this study possible. Scrolling to the bottom of the web, we find video interviews with the MEPs, as well as an archive of the press releases that have been made.

Media Coverage​​

• Number of clippings = 47

• Countries: EU (13), Belgium (19), Romania (4), Croatia (2), The Netherlands (2), Poland (1), Germany (1), Portugal (1), Italy (1), Greece (1), Malta (1), France (1)

• Biggest Reach: 2.03M Politico Europe