OK, the polls for Best European Blog (Non UK) closed with a suboptimal result for this blog. 
However, without much campaigning and without any proper blogging during the voting process this is not a big surprise. Due to their innovative format of online democracy which allowed multiple voting, this competition clearly favours blogs with a fanbase and a large readership… and we are not particularly strong in any of these areas Obviously, there is a discussion on exactly those issues (+ the “quality question”) on various blogs out there, one good article can be found here.
Anyway it was fun, and I would like to welcome the new readers that found this blog through the competition. I hope you will enjoy reading our little blog. I also would like to thank everyone who voted for us and I also want to thank the blogs that endorsed Kosmopolito during the competition: here, here, here, here, here. Thanks a lot!
I suggest that next year the organisers should rethink the categories. “Best European Blog” should not be a category for different national blogs but for blogs with a European perspective since a few other EU blogs were competing in other categories. Moreover, the category also featured a very diverse bunch of blogs, from culture and food to politics and photos … Moreover, I still think the UK is part of Europe so the name of the category with the focus on “European but Non-UK” is quite baffling. Why does the UK have an own category but Germany, France and Italy not? Is it because of the US focus of the weblogawards?
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Another new toy I have discovered is twitter. So feel free to follow my musings here. I think the tool has potential for politics, journalism and public debate, although regarding EU issues twitter seems not to be mainstream yet…
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I am also looking for a good tool to track comments on different blog posts. What tools do you use to keep updated with discussions and comment threads? Feel free to share your strategies and suggestions in the comments!
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Some readers might be wondering what happened to the Kosmolinks. Problem is that diigo is not supporting self hosted blogs (?) and I am still looking for a tool that publishes weekly (and not daily!) linkrolls. Again, please share your suggestions in the comments.
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And here is a “happy new year” link treat for you: The quite hard to find EU calendar and searcheuropa, a search engine for the europa.eu page.
5 Comments
Hi,
I came across this blog through the competition. I have found that the interest in my country (swe) for what is happening within the union, new decisions that will affect us, the upcomming election etc is anything but luke warm -there simply is no discussion.
And what has the last four years meant for medical reseach i.e. stem cell research?
Kosmopolito,
Why not arrange a real Euroblog contest (or happening) yourself, to make blogs with a European perspective known, and not limited to blogs in English?
Perhaps Jon Worth, a man of many No campaigns, could be persuaded to when he climbs off one of his London buses?
@ Ellen Welcome to the blog
Unfortunately I am not following the stem cell research debate very closely but I can assure you that your observation of the missing EU debate in Sweden is quite a European phenomena that can be found in most countries…
@ Ralf, yes I agree, something needs to be done! First we will have the blogging project with the EJC starting in February which hopefully will make EU blogs more popular.
The Fistful of Euros used to organise a European blogging contest called “Satin Pajamas” but the last edition was organised in 2007 so maybe we can motivate them to run another one in the near future and make it a regular event?
Sorry, the stem cell thing was a bit out of context. I think faster than I write at least that is my excuse. What I was thinking about has to do with Mr Barosso. Aparently some scientists have voiced their concern regarding research on stem cells; they demanded common rules regarding such research.
Now religion has formed into politics as there are more catholics in the EP as well as more groups working for the catholic church and lobbying within the EU; a string of religious NGOs, and special interest groups promoting catholic issues. Mr Barosso have appointed five catholics to the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies. I think that is important. The ethics group as well as the electives will have a huge impact on which way they want to stear future research within the Union.
Indeed, it would be quite bad to have any religious radicals influencing political decision (as it was the case in the USA under George W. Bush).
Unfortunately I know too little about the topic to comment on details and I also don’t know whether Catholics have become influential in Brussels. But I don’t think there is a necessary correlation between being catholic and promoting the Vatican line of thought.
When I lived in Brussels I never had the impression that religious group were very active,… but that might be my personal experience.