Building trust in the digital age

Speaking at eolas Magazine’s Social Media Dublin conference, Adalbert Jahnz, Head of Social Media and Visual Communication at the European Commission, discusses how the Commission is adapting its communications strategy to engage citizens, counter disinformation, and foster trust across an increasingly complex digital landscape.

The European Commission is operating in a communications environment fundamentally different to that of a decade ago. According to Adalbert Jahnz, this shift has transformed the Commission’s approach to citizen engagement.

Whereas overcoming indifference was once the key challenge for European institutions, the institution must now contend with an information environment marked by online hostility, disinformation, and declining general levels of trust, while communicating with over 450 million citizens across 24 official languages.

“In the past, our main problem with citizen engagement used to be indifference, or at least people not really knowing so much and perhaps not caring about what we do,” Jahnz explains.

“Today, this has changed. The European Commission has become much more visible because there have been more and more crises in the world, most recently with Covid-19 and now, of course, wars and geopolitics.”

Against this backdrop, Jahnz emphasises that the Commission’s communications strategy is underpinned by principles that distinguish it from many other actors operating online.

“Those competing in the information environment face fewer and fewer constraints,” he observes. “As a public authority, we have to be guided by very clear principles.”

These principles, he explains, are accuracy, inclusiveness, and trust. “We try to project these values in all of our communications,” he says, acknowledging the complexity of applying them consistently across diverse political, cultural, and linguistic contexts.

Prioritising reach and engagement

For Jahnz, effective citizen engagement begins with ensuring the Commission’s communications are visible. With approximately three-quarters of Europeans active online, social media has become central to reaching audiences where they increasingly consume information.

“Chronologically, the first thing that we need to do is focus on reach,” he explains. “We have to get into people’s feeds.”

To achieve this, the Commission has adopted a broad platform strategy, maintaining a presence across established social media channels while investing in growing platforms such as Bluesky, Mastodon and W Social.

Collectively, the Commission followership reaches around eight million accounts, generating approximately two billion impressions and video views annually.

However, Jahnz stresses that visibility alone does not constitute meaningful public engagement.

“That is a lot, but obviously that is not really citizen engagement,” he remarks.

To drive citizen engagement, the Commission has invested heavily in community management, maintaining active dialogue with users across its principal platforms. This approach, Jahnz says, distinguishes the Commission from many public sector organisations that have scaled back direct engagement with online audiences.

“We try to go quite customised and personalised in our community management, and we are seeing that this is something that pays off,” he says.

The Commission is, however, not currently engaging in community management activities on X (Twitter), reflecting its assessment of the platform’s environment.

Alongside audience engagement, Jahnz says the Commission has been fundamentally reconsidering how institutional content is produced.

Rather than adapting traditional government communications for social media, the organisation increasingly begins with the conventions of each platform before considering how policy messages can be communicated effectively.
“We try to be as unbureaucratic as we can,” he explains. “We figure out content that resonates with people, making our policies visually attractive and ensuring our speakers communicate in ways that are relevant to the platforms and current trends.”

This audience-first approach is particularly evident in the Commission’s evolving YouTube strategy. Instead of publishing standalone institutional videos, it is creating recurring series intended to build long-term audiences.

“Rather than starting from the messages we want to pass, we are trying to figure out how the platform works and what people actually want to see there,” Jahnz says. “We want to produce YouTube series that people can create a relationship with, subscribe to, and follow over time.” The Commission is starting to test this approach on a dedicated new YouTube channel, Made in Europe.

Paid campaigns also remain an important component of the Commission’s communications strategy, particularly where specific policy objectives or difficult information environments require additional reach.

Describing paid promotion as “indispensable”, Jahnz says campaigns are carefully tailored to local markets, recognising the importance of adapting messaging, language, and creative content to individual specific audiences.

Encouraging public participation

Beyond institutional communications, Jahnz argues that genuine democratic engagement depends on citizens discussing European issues independently rather than simply responding to messages from public authorities.

“Real citizen engagement is not just us talking to citizens and citizens talking to us,” he explains. “It is very much citizens talking between themselves, about us and about European policies. This is the real lifeblood of democracy.”
To encourage these conversations, the Commission has expanded its engagement with content creators across Europe. While traditional influencer campaigns continue to be used selectively on high-priority issues, Jahnz says the Commission has increasingly focused on building long-term relationships with creators through study visits and community-building initiatives.

Rather than commissioning promotional content, these programmes aim to provide creators with a deeper understanding of European policymaking and direct access to Commission officials.

“We are trying to give content creators the tools to understand the European Union and to create a living relationship with people inside the Commission,” Jahnz explains. “We have been doing this for about three years now, and we are seeing some of them becoming very active on these topics.”

He emphasises, however, that any collaboration involving public funds must remain transparent and capable of withstanding public scrutiny.

“We are mindful of our obligations as a public institution while at the same time being ambitious,” he says.

Balancing authenticity and trust

Concluding, Jahnz acknowledges that the rapid evolution of digital communications requires the Commission to continually adapt its approach while remaining faithful to the principles expected of a public institution.

He maintains that successful public communication cannot be measured solely through impressions or follower numbers, but by fostering informed public discussion grounded in credibility and trust.

“We always have to combine and balance reach, engagement, and authenticity. That is really what we are continually working towards,” Jahnz concludes.