The so-called “euroblogosphere” is a rather small specialised blogging scene. It has always been like that. However, lately I have the feeling that not enough new bloggers take up the challenge to write about EU topics. It seems to me that only very few new blogs have been launched in the last months/years. Moreover, there are simply not enough good blogs around, somehow not much has changed in the last 2 or 3 years. From my own experience, it is very difficult to motivate people to blog about EU politics – and keep them interested for several years.
There is also the argument that blogging is on the decline because of twitter, tumblr and facebook. I am not sure whether blogging about politics (as political arguments usually need more than 140 characters!) is actually affected by this trend although it is true that the EU twittersphere seems to be growing. OK, blogging is not for everyone and not everyone is motivated to blog regularly. However, if there was a bigger EU-blogosphere it would probably motivate more people to start blogging!
But how to create a bigger EU blogosphere? I don’t really have an answer for that but somehow I have the feeling that we should step up our efforts to ‘recruit’ more bloggers and to keep active bloggers motivated! Especially the community building aspect of bloggingportal.eu has been a success – albeit with a limited impact.
If we think about target groups there are several groups that spring to mind:
(1) I think students are an important target group (especially in European studies, journalism, politics, economics, social sciences…). At the same time it would be good to have people from other more specialized subjects in order to strengthen the EU policy-blogging scene (for example energy, competition, single market, environment, fisheries, agriculture, standardization issues…). What I also would like to see is more local and regional blogs that could evaluate EU funding projects from a non-Brussels perspective or provide a regional links to EU issues. What needs to be done to motivate students to start a blog? And even if students start blogging – how can they be motivated to keep blogging after they receive their degree?
(2) The second big target group could be the thousands of interns in Brussels and elsewhere. There are quite a lot of internships in the EU bubble. They should (on average!) have slightly more free-time than other people and could use the blog for job hunting if they manage to create some buzz in their field. Especially in Brussels I think there could be a huge potential as many interns work in EU related jobs. Maybe blogging could give some of them the necessary extra qualification to succeed in the job market! But how to reach them and how to motivate them?
(3) Blogging should not be restricted to the younger generation. People that work in a job that has something to do with the EU or linked to EU issues are missing in the blogosphsere. Private and professional blogs are also not present in the EU blogging scene. Lots of people that blog on national politics do it as a hobby – is the EU not a topic that can be a good blogging hobby? Generally, it seems that within this target group EU blogging is not seen as a very useful thing to do. But how to change this?
(4) Academics. This is another complex story and I have first hand experience with ideasoneurope.eu The main problem is that the academic community in Europe does not appreciate blogging. And there is also a lack of true European public intellectuals, which is surprising as the internet in particular would be the perfect arena, but again, it is not happening. Partly, because the concept of a “public intellectual” does not seem to be popular in Europe - but also because a lot of academics are not familiar with the internet. (I am not kidding!) So, if you are an academic and you blog instead of writing a journal article you are basically wasting your time and it does not seem to help your career. But what can be done to change this?
(5) Retired professionals. With or without a EU job background. Is it possible to motivate this age group to take up blogging as a new hobby?
(6) [Update] Civil Society. There are many NGOs that could use blogging and social media to get their points across. It is a cheap and rather effective tool to engage with the public.
(7) [Update] Think Tanks. I argued before that think tanks should start thinking about blogs and social media. Especially if a think tank wants to reach a wider or specialized audience. Only very few EU affairs think tanks write a blog or use any social media tools. CER or ECFR are good examples how a think tank blog could look like.
(8) Existing bloggers in national blogospheres. There a many bloggers that write about the EU in a national context but they do not engage with a wider European blogosphere. They might just write a couple of posts a year about the EU. But nobody outside their national blogosphere takes notices. At the same time many bloggers writing in national context are not aware of the EU stuff. How can that be changed?
(9) Existing Eurobloggers. This is the big question about motivation. What needs to be done to create a system to keep people motivated. For me it is the community aspect, meeting people in real life, doing projects, talking to people.If that is part of the answer, we need to create more possibilities to move the blogging experience into the real world. And what would be the role of the various blogging communities such as bloggingportal.eu, ideasoneurope.eu, blogactiv.eu, cafebabel.com or 27etc.? Can we create better synergies and learn from each other?
There seem to be several interrelated problems (that also have not changed for the last years):
- How to motivate active eurobloggers and how to keep them interested?
- How can EU topics be integrated in national blogospheres? And how can the link between different national spheres and between the national and the European level be organised?
- How to get more people interested in blogging about the EU?
A post with more questions than answers. If you have any answers or any idea how to approach any of the issues raised in this post – just post a comment!
I missed other important issue about Eurobblogosphere. In my opinion the real question is not how to make it bigger but how to make more national blogs to write in english. But in other way there can be a debate if it is really important cause blogs with local language can atract more locals interest which is also good for common EU popularity.
I did not mention the language problem as it is rather complex – not sure whether English is actually the answer. Translation tools became quite powerful so what is needed is the link to Brussels and the link between different national blogospheres.
I tried just for fun to translate all my blog post to english and atleast for me it was more fun to read a nonsense that tools made then a real help.
in case of links i can give one – currenty probably one of the bigges euro blgo in lithuania:
http://www.euroblogas.lt/
intresting fact is that blog is run by european commision representors at Lithuania. The authors is common people but blog is organised and promoted by EC representors. Maybe that would be also the anwser how to make a euroblogosphere bigger, EU instituion should build a platforms for people to write blogs and promote it. I mean how many people would really care to write about EU enlargement if not a European young journalist award?
I had quite good experiences with google translate but the quality seem to depend on the language in question. And Lithuanian might not be one of the languages that work well…
Thanks for the link. I added it to bloggingportal.eu. Not sure whether platforms run by the institutions are the answer to all problems. Lots of bloggers want to be independent from the subject they write about. There are already many journalists awards etc. It seems to me that there are enough platforms out there – but content could be improved. I think what the institutions should be doing is engage with bloggers in comments and in real life. If you write about the EU and you debate your posts with EU officials it does boost your self confidence but it also helps to get clarifications on a lot of issues.
I agree that the euroblogosphere needs to grow, but from my own observations over the last years the amount of EU-focused blogs, including their diversity, specialisation and their quality, has been visibly rising, rising in a way that it is getting difficult to follow everything that is written (which was quite doable two years ago).
I also think that it is easy to miss a lot of blog posts on EU matters that are written in the national blogospheres. We may thus underestimate the amount of actual debate that there is on questions of EU politics. Following Andrius, it might thus be of added value if there were national bloggers who’d provide some English-language metablogging on what has been written about EU politics recently in national blogs.
And an important group that you have forgotten are NGOs involved in EU politics. Take for example the blog post by my Transparency International colleague Carl who has blogged from the EU Commission expert committee on banking last week, probably one of the first ever accounts coming from an EU commission expert group meeting.
If NGOs would share more of their background insights into EU politics, share the positions officials have made public in meetings, explain the possible impact of proposals made or discussed in the EU institutions and thus help the wider society to become involved in the EU policy process, we’d not only get a more lively euroblogosphere but also a better document decision-making at EU level.
It is true, it became rather difficult to follow everything. But I still have the feeling that the growth only happened in some niche topics. I agree that most of it might indeed be happening on the national level. I try to follow the UK and the German blogging debates and I can’t really see a big change there compared with 5 years ago. It is crisis driven, the peaks are connected to big events such as Lisbon Treaty, EP elections or the Euro-crisis. But real watchdog blogs or subject specialists that follow one portfolio or issue are still not that numerous.
The main question is obviously how to link the different national blogopsheres. Meta blogging in English could work very well but it is extra work – so how can we motivate bloggers to do that?
NGOs are indeed missing from the blogosphere which is a bit surprising because blogging offers a cheap and rather effective way to get your message out. I should have included NGOs as one possible target group for growth potential. But again how to get them to embrace the blogging concept?
Well I can try to answer what stops me as a student from blogging. First there is the time issue. Of course this varies between studies, workload and whether you care about getting your studies done in time, and whether you have a part time job or other extra-curricular activites. Personally, I feel like I have at least a 60 hour week, and generally when you did your work for one week, you can already start preparing the next. Granted, my actual hours in lectures/tutorials are limited, but that means nothing. In the contrary, maybe it even makes it harder, because you basically could/should study all the time. Then in the time I am not studying I either need to sleep or enjoy a shred of social life. That’s one issue.
I think another important issue is that as a student I don’t really feel qualified to talk about most of the stuff that is at issue in the EU, after all we only learn about EU law in the limited subset of our classes, so it is very limited.
Lastly, and maybe also somewhat related to (2) and maybe even more important, while being very interested in the topic in general, I don’t really need the hassle that can come with having a public presence on the web, google finds me too quickly already and I have witnessed too many social media mishaps already so that I feel like it is not worth it. Maybe, if it was still legal to really blog anonymously, but as far as I know this is not really possible nor legal.
Most bloggers started in their student times so it is a time management issue – but it is possible. Blogging should not take a lot of time. One post a week is a good starting point. It should not take you longer than 20 minutes to write a post. At the beginning this might be problematic but over time you develop a routine and it does not take so much time. One of the main advantages of being a student blogger is that you can basically link your assignments to the blog. So if you have to write an essay on a specific topic you can take that as a basis for a blog post. Obviously you should not copy paste the essay but having written the essay you should be able to pick out one topic that could work as a blog post.
In a way I understand the argument that you do not feel qualified enough to write about the EU. However, looking at the general level of EU journalism you should not be afraid. There are many people that are not qualified at all and they are very outspoken on EU issues. If you stick to the topics that you cover in your course you will see that you are actually quite an expert already. It is more a issue of self confidence I think.
I am very much in favor of anonymous blogging. I know the legal situation in Germany is a bit problematic. But there are ways that you can still blog anonymously. First of all I don’t think the German authorities would really hunt you down. Anyway, you can always use software/hosting outside Germany. Using one of the group blog sites (blogactiv.eu or ideasoneurope.eu) might also do the trick! I know it depends a bit on the language you use – if you mostly write in German this can also be problematic from a legal perspective. But then again I would just risk it. If you write about EU topics you will not get a huge readership so chances are slim that you will attract the interest of the authorities…
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Interestingly enough just today the NYTimes reported on the decline of blogging vis a vis twitter and facebook: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/internet/21blog.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26
Sure, they are right to a certain extent. The nature of blogging is changing, especially private diary like blogs are disappearing. At the same time most newspaper op-eds look like blogs. I think it is different when it comes to ambitious political blogging because in politics issues require a bit more than 140 characters or a facebook status. Bloggin will survive but it will be a niche tool for certain issues and I like to think that the EU is such a topic.
Of course all this is as maybe. The bottom line for you is that people blog about what tickles them. Either professionally, or personally. You note,
“Lots of people that blog on national politics do it as a hobby – is the EU not a topic that can be a good blogging hobby?”
Well no, not really. Most blogs are amateur. And they come from a sense of interest, humour or frustration with the world as it is. To ask if people
The idea that something truely useful could come out of an EU sponsored blog is risible, Lithuania notwithstanding. The readership won’t wear it. They will feel it is propagandist.
AS with the mainstream press, people just aren’t that into EU.
I am student writing a blog with my classmates, and by my experience I believe it is a good idea. As step21 said, time can be a problem sometimes. However, it is how you manage the time. Also I think a blog in class is a kind of training. We are learning how to use it, to create our own network in Twitter, comenting other blogs. And maybe in the future, it helps us finding a job. After graduation, some of us will continue with a personal Blog, and others will forget the idea. But at least I expect that about 10-15 classmates will continue blogging (I am in), although not all of them in EU issues. In my point of view the best is to have a blog in class where to learn how to use it and to feel it as own. The problem is that the students need to be very lucky with a teacher that knows how to manage a blog, social networking, and the different tools, and that he/she believes the blog deserves time and discussion in class… In my case, we are very lucky.
You are doing a great job there. Keep it up and a big thanks to your teacher! If you need any blogging support after your course finishes just let us know! Is your teacher blogging too? (just being curious here…)
Your project also shows that it is much more fun to write on a group blog. You get feedback on your writing and the group dynamic might increase motivation. And if you have some sort of rota you don’t have the pressure to blog all the time….
Thanks for a good conversation here.
A few scattered thoughts: The language problem is important. I personally blog both in Greek (when I believe that what I want to say is mostly relevant for greeks) and in English (when my topic is relevant to anybody-anywhere and also to communicate with my foreign readers). Our language is spoken only by 10mill people, unlike English of course, French, German or Spanish. So, how will any of you be able to follow posts written in our obscure language? It is also de-motivating for anyone to know that his potential audience reach is very small. The reverse is also a problem: Although I do know that there are excellent people, organizations etc that do amazing work in e-democracy/open gov(my fave fields), I have no way in reading their views and work. I am “condemned” to follow Anglo-Saxon views only.
On a different note: I wonder how do you define “euroblogosphere”. Do you consider only blogs that write strictly about EU institutions for example? The EU is so much embedded in everything we do, that I have a real difficulty in judging which is a European blog and which is not. Someone who writes about the environment in general, is bound to write a few posts about EU policy on the environment. How would you classify this blog then? Same applies everywhere, in any topic. So, I am not sure what you mean by “specialized blogging scene”. I think we need to agree on terms & definitions, and then measurements on how big or small it really is.
Also, personally I wouldn’t place too much hope on the academic group. I believe the wider “civil society” or “third sector” communities are more promising. An example here in Greece is ELIAMEP, an excellent foreign policy think tank with a strong european focus which has its own blogging space (http://blogs.eliamep.gr/en/), also with a blogactiv arm (http://eliamep.blogactiv.eu/). I have no relation to them, it’s just a good example.
Thanks for your time!
With bloggingportal now following well over 700 blogs, I agree with Ron that the numbers are actually rising, particularly when one takes a long view. I could count the number of blogs touching on EU subjects on one hand a few years ago.
I’m less interested, personally, in defining what the euroblogoshphere is than figuring out how to make it useful.
As posted earlier, making connections between national conversations, particularly when they discuss issues touched upon by the EU (and that’s a LOT of issues) is clearly valuable.
It’s hampered by the language barriers. However, both problems have the same solution: nationally-embedded bloggers glossing national conversations across Europe, and vice versa; in the process bridging language barriers through a pragmatic mix of human- and machine-translation, and adopting a lingua franca.
There’s only one problem. Why bother doing it? The only motivation I can think of – becoming a ‘national expert’ on EU affairs within a national blogosphere – is probably just a pipe dream. Who has the time?
Interesting post. Personally I find EU matters are often complex and I rely on information from the media which is often twisted from the truth and turned into tripe.
We are an Italian company and have a blog about EU funds (especially but not only 7FP and direct fundings) in English.
Our target is SMEs and research institutes/universities.
It has been a very usefull way to find clients and partners to apply for fundings and to promote the knowledge of these fundings among people and enterprises.
We are now opening a new blog in Italian because lots of italian entrepreneurs does not speak English and have great problems in finding information in a foreign language.
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