Networking sites key to urging voter turnout

FACEBOOK, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter – they have all been enlisted to encourage Europe’s 375 million voters to cast their votes in the European Parliament elections.

Whether the message gets across to a European public that appears to find democracy a yawn will be known this weekend. But so far the people behind dragging the European Parliament into the cyber-age believe they have done a good job.

Some 14,000 fans on Facebook may not seem a lot, but the social networking sites are registering lots of hits and, most surprisingly of all, they are driving traffic to the parliament’s own election site.