Opening Up My Euroblogging: Language and Linking

I've been inspired by Mathew Lowry and Ralf Grahn to open up my Euroblogging and to try and reach out a bit more across the blogosphere(s).

The debate on the French Euroblogosphere (see Europasionaria) prompted Grahnlaw to introduce a policy on languages and comments on his blog - Ralf wants to promote greater connections by having a greater number of "commenting" languages available. Cracking open the linguistic barriers is one of the greatest obstacles to growing and connecting the Euroblogosphere and it's a great initiative to have to start welcoming more comments and debate in different languages. So I'm going to do the same for my blog. My linguistic ability only really extends to German (with a smattering of very, very basic French), so I will also rely on machine translation to help with responding.

Another side to this is commenting on other Euroblogs in different languages. Machine translation will be my (contrary) companion here, as the German Euroblogosphere seems to be very small. I'm not sure how bloggers will react to having strangely worded comments marring their blogs, but I'll try and bluster my way through. I have been following some non-English Euroblogs, though the number is quite small - hopefully by diving deeper across linguistic barriers will unearth some blogging treasures.

Finally, I need to start reaching out across national barriers (the second great divide that afflicts the Euroblogosphere). Earlier this week I wrote a mini-series on the Northern Irish MEPs, and I tried to make it neutral (given the divide in NI) and I tried to provide a context for those who aren't as familiar with the European Parliament. As far as I can tell, no Northern Ireland-based blogger picked up on what I wrote. Now this is fair enough - my writing style is a bit drawn-out and slightly academic (tips on how to blog better are welcome in the comments, by the way) - but there is no real debate on the NI MEPs in the NI blogosphere between elections, as far as I can tell.

This post is mainly about me trying to push myself to blog better and to cross barriers that I haven't found the time to in the past (I find blogging time-consuming, and comments take up time = particularly if you want to comment on several blogs). I haven't commented on NI, Irish and UK blogs that much, so I haven't been developing those relations between the blogospheres. It can be hard to know when to "speak", in that Europolitics rarely crops up in the NI blogosphere (though I've undoubtedly missed opportunities). So the lesson for me is: make more comments.

Mathew Lowry's post on making bridges and specialist bloggers in the Euroblogosphere makes me think there are 3 things the Euroblogosphere needs to do:

1. Grow! Bloggingportal.eu is up to 630 Euroblogs, so the Euroblogosphere is already growing quickly. New Eurobloggers are needed to replace those, like Julian Frisch, who have dropped out. A bigger Euroblogosphere will be better placed to make the connections between languages and national Blogospheres and support and encourage the growth of specialist Eurobloggers.

2. Reach out between linguistic barriers by commenting. This will help broaden debate and increase the impact of everyone's posts - after all, on European topics, if they're interesting, they deserve to be discussed across the Euroblogosphere.

3. Reach out across national Blogosphere lines (in my case, NI, Ireland and the UK). This will widen the debates and increase the influence of Euroblogging (and hopefully spur a greater interest in European politics (both in itself and in holding MEPs, etc. to account).

It may be a bad time for me to commit to this (I'll be a bit quite over the next few weeks), but I'll try to work at it and make it part of my routine.

And apologies to everyone who doesn't blog (but you should try(!)) and is a bit tired of the self-referential Euroblogging of the past few weeks!

I've an influence of 49.17 and I'm not afraid to use it!

According to the Waggener Edstrom report, I'm the 22nd most influential blogger (15th in the EU General section) with an influence of 49.17 (PDF via Jon Worth, the 5th most influential). It's flattering, in a way, but I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to mean - I honestly doubt that I influence the opinion of other bloggers that much and insiders of the Brussels Bubble less so, so it's hard to escape the feeling that the sums have gone wrong somewhere. Especially since it only included English language blogs (an seemingly not even those which blog in several languages, including English...).

Eurogoblin has torn into the report and has raised serious questions over the methodology of the report. A key symptom of the is the placing of "The Digger" in third place, despite the low number of posts. Mathew Lowry is a bit more gentle - citing it as at least an attempt to understand the Euroblogosphere more - though still critical. I think Waggener Edstrom deserve some credit for trying to create a ranking system (measuring influence is probably a hard thing to get right in an overall sense given the wide range of issues and audiences that the EU is composed of), but I agree with Eurogoblin's critical analysis of the methodology.

Meanwhile, Europasionaria is picking up on the French Euroblogosphere's debate on its reach and influence, and I think she's right when she approaches the question of influence (or appeal of the Euroblogosphere) as a need to be more broad in outlook to draw in more people and to spark more interest in the EU and the political side of Europe (meaning the day-to-day issues rather than solely the integration question). I know that I tend to be drawn to blogs that have broader ranges of topics (though I do have a specialist interest in the law and Blawgs as well), and I think this hits on a fundamental rule of the internet: people generally just look up what they're interested in. So for the European institutions this means that accessibility of information is the key (so it can be useful and "on hand" for people who need it, and is more likely to be examined and picked up on by the media and bloggers), while for bloggers, a broadness of touch is an advantage unless you want to focus on more specialised blogging.

In the end, though, blogging is a personal hobby, and the way the Euroblogosphere is now probably accurately reflects the people behind it. Finding new blogs, promoting them and encouraging a wider and broader 'sphere is key, and a big part of the mission of Bloggingportal.eu. Europaeum has come up with a new hashtag to help the promotion and discovery of new Euroblogs: #bkae "Better Know a Euroblog". It'd be great to get this hashtag up and running and promote new Euroblogs and submit them to Bloggingportal.eu so they can reach a wider audience.

The European Citizen's now on Facebook!

The European Citizen now has a page on Facebook! You can "like" the blog here.

Having the Facebook page for the blog is new for me, so if there are any tips on how to make the most of it, or requests for what you would want to see from it, just say, either in the comments or on the page.

Celebrating 1 Year of Bloggingportal.eu

Bloggingportal.eu is 1 year old today!

Though it's only been around for a short time, the blog aggragator quickly became a focal point for the Euroblogging community, and I doubt that anyone can quite picture doing without it today. Bloggingportal.eu has made the Euroblogosphere more visible and accessable, and is a great resource to "harness" the best of the Euroblogosphere and make it more navigatable - an increasingly important role, since the number of Euroblogs as more than doubled over the last year, judging from the number of newly registered blogs.

The website is run by volunteers from the blogging community, and this has perhaps contributed to a greater community feeling in the Euroblogosphere. Though a lot has been achieved over the last year, the editors are always looking for ways of improving and expanding the site and making it more useful and user-friendly. So don't be afraid to make suggestions!

Over the last year I've found Bloggingportal.eu a great resource for finding new blogs and perspectives, which have influenced my blogging and reading patterns. My experience of the site may be from a blogger's perspective, but I hope (and I believe that) Bloggingportal.eu is just as great a resource for casual readers.

So happy birthday to Bloggingportal.eu, and may there be many more of them!

"The European Citizen" is one year old today!

In some ways it's hard to believe it (and in other ways not so hard), but The European Citizen blog has been up and running for a year now today. Blogging has been very new to me, and, particularly being an old technophobe at heart, there's been a bit of a learning curve. But blogging has been a great experience, perhaps added to by the growth of the Euroblogosphere over the last year - there are now over 500 blogs on Bloggingportal.eu! Looking back, it's been a busy year blogging-wise (as well as offline): blogging has turned out to be a lot more active than I thought it would be. What I thought would be an occasional article has turned into 238 articles, and has seen me get involved in several projects.

A lot of the year was taken up looking at the Lisbon Treaty, and a few sideways glances at the strange creature that was Libertas. Stalled ideas came in the shape of a small German-language blog and a small mini-series (which I'll have to get back to at some point). One of the big events last year was the European elections - which I tried to cover, with some interviewing of the NI candidates and a piece on the NI constituency, and also trying my hand at a bit of post-election analysis. Covering the European election, despite the lack-luster campaign, proved to be too big to give a quick overview of every member state, but I've just under 5 years to prepare for the next one, so I'll try to build on it for next time.

Politically, the right won again, and the left fell into disaray - perhaps enough to be called a "lame duck opposition".

August and September saw me get more involved in different projects, with Bloggers for Europe and Th!nk About It, as well as co-founding "Chasing Brussels", a new EU politics podcast. The launch event of Th!nk2 in Copenhagen was a great experience, where I got to meet lots of bloggers (both experienced and just starting out), including some Eurobloggers. Th!nk2 also led me to interview an MEP, and stand in on a Christmas Lecture debate on nuclear power. (Th!nk3 is open for registration if you're interested in signing up).

There was also the standard (Euro)blogger's criticism of the mainstream media.

I've also taken part in some Euroblogging community building (very much on the participation rather than organising side of things), with the Euroblogger meet-up, and joining Bloggingportal.eu as a volunteer editor.

Given the growth of the Euroblogosphere, and the sheer amount of issues that will face the EU over the next while, I'm sure that there'll be a lot to look out for this year - and I'd encourage others to join in and set up their own blogs.

In the future I hope to add a bit more on party politics, though the blog will mainly stay the same. Given that it's my final year for my degree (final semester now!), the blogging rate will probably stay the same as it was in autumn (I don't think I'll be writing 35 posts in a month for a while!).

I hope you've enjoyed the first year of The European Citizen!

The State of the Euroblogosphere

Thursday saw the first Euroblogosphere meet-up, and, despite being plagued by technical issues and general rebellion by the internet, it went quite well. An outrage of bloggers* gathered to discuss the language barrier, how to raise interest in and expand the Euroblogosphere, and to just chat generally.

The language barrier was the dominant issue, with several ideas being floated. While English is perhaps the most commonly spoken second language, restricting any translation effort into just English would be quite limiting on the Euroblogosphere, and would exclude many Europeans from the chance of getting involved. However, it's clear that any translation effort - even if focused on only a few interesting or influential articles - would be time-consuming, and labour intensive. The Euroblogosphere has proven very capable of making voluntary efforts - such as Bloggingportal.eu and the Gender Balanced Commission campaign - it's hard to see how a major translation effort could be sustained. Having a funded and specially designed blogging platform to bridge the language gap would seem to be a better option, but it too raises many technical, funding and presentational issues. A voluntary newsletter or summarising effort based around Bloggingportal.eu struck me as the best option.

Engagement was the most interesting issue for me. Nosemonkey made some good arguments about the exclusivity of the Euroblogosphere:

"What the Euroblogosphere needs is simple - a) more of us, and b) more passion. The EU is incredibly dull. The reason we've all got such little traffic is mostly because of this - but also because we're failing to make it sound interesting. The anti-EU blogs, meanwhile, are much more fun to read - because they've got real passion behind them (even if they're mostly based on lies and bullshit) [...] Anything that makes it sound interesting and relevant. The biggest problem with the Euroblogosphere is that it's a) very small, a, and b) most Eurobloggers haven't been doing it very long - which means that most of the coverage is very, very general. Loads of posts about what it means to be European, ideal reforms of the EU. It's all too theoretical. Political theory only engages geeks - for it to grow we need to engage the man/woman on the street. This is something the anti-EU blogs do very well - albeit through lies and bullshit."

As a Euroblogger, I'm definitely on the theoretical/institutional side of things, but I recognise the value in opening up to different aspects of EU politics. If we want to encourage growth and development in the Eurobloggersphere (more readership, more bloggers, and more engagement), then as a political blogosphere, we will probably have to move towards a more normal style of political blogging. This means blogging more on the left-right, government-opposition divide in the EU, because this is both the politics that matter more in day-to-day life, and the type of politics people can identify with more, and find easier to debate. "How far should the banks be regulated and how - and how is it playing out in Brussels and in the national capitals?" is a much more politically relevant question to people than the institutional development of Qualified Majority Voting. This brings up a few interesting points, though:

1. It's easier to write about institutional politics than just politics. Yes, I wrote that right - it really is easier. It's much easier to have an opinion on the high politics of institutional reform and Commission appointments than it is to follow policy debates. Policy debates and legislation take a lot of time and effort (and the patience of a recently canonised stone) to follow. The passage of legislation is slow; it pings back and forth from the Council to the Parliament, and is hard to track on the EU websites. Following months of negotiation on aspects of the single market may not be an appealing idea to prospective (and existing) Eurobloggers. And would people read it?

2. Lack of official engagement on the web. Or indeed in the media at large. Though there's plenty of officialese statements flowing from each of the institutions, there's very little in the way of media-friendly policy statements or active MEPs on the internet. While some dedicated Eurobloggers may track down and explain some policy areas, the high level of effort involved will mean that it would remain a minority of the Euroblogosphere. But perhaps the effort of trying to open up EU politics like this would encourage more MEP engagement and the media-isation of Brussels' political language?

3. Speed. Legislation is slow, and it's hard to maintain interest over the period to report on an issue in the same way a national blogger may do in a shorter time span.

4. Bloggers. You can't get bloggers to do anything, not even if you ask politely. So how can you encourage a move towards reporting on the party-political aspect of the EU (note that this shouldn't require becoming party-political for the bloggers themselves). Perhaps some sort of common call to look at this aspect of EU politics more? It should be an area that is interesting in and of itself for Eurobloggers. We can't ask or expect other bloggers to write about it, but hopefully some will pick it up, at least partially, and add their two eurocents. So how about it? Do you think it would be a good area to write about, even occasionally?

Despite the obstacles, I think it's at least worth a try. I won't be able to properly try until after Christmas, and the idea of Europe and how its institutions work will still be very interesting to me, but I'll try to write a bit more on the daily politics of the EU. It'll take some adjustment, so bear with me on this.

Also, interaction with national blogospheres will be important too. I'm not sure how much I can bring EU politics closer to Northern Ireland's regional politics, but I should (and will) try to interact more with national blogospheres. Again, it'll take a while to get going, since my time's a bit limited at the moment.

So, do you think it could work?




* I'm hoping to get "outrage" accepted as the collective noun for bloggers, since it's the most common natural state of blogging.

There's now a Chasing Brussels episode on the topic, with many Eurobloggers debating these issues.

First ThinkCast

The Think2 blogging community has started up over on the Think About It website, and we've decided to set up a Think2 podcast. It will launch officially in the third week of September with a special launch event podcast from Copenhagen, but in the meantime there will be 3 "preview" podcasts before then. Each podcast will feature a different group of around 5 ThinkCasters, since we got a great response to the podcasting idea. The first was recorded on Saturday and has now been published online.

The first podcast is about blogging, its impact and its future/purpose; you can find it here.

The Group includes:

Domen (the Host),
Hai,
Adela,
Frederico,
and me.

Hope you like it.

The Euroblog Network, Condensed

Just a quick note, though anyone reading is probably aware of this already by now, that Jon Worth, among others, has set up a site which brings together all the EU related blogs for easy reference. I've linked the new BloggingPortal.eu in the self-explanatory "links" column down the left-hand side of the page (as "EU Blog Portal").

It's a great idea, and though it is supposed to show all EU related blogs (it aggregates 281 blogs so far), it's still very flattering that I'm already on it, seeing as I've only been blogging for just over 2 weeks.