Although I find the idea behind flattr fascinating  I doubt that it will be a huge success on this blog because of various reasons. First of all I don’t think I have enough readers (a common problem among eurobloggers!). I also suspect that most of my readers do not have a flattr account.  The second problem is that flattr is not yet popular enough. It seems to me that only few blogs  (mainly tech related), add-ons and several NGOs (wikileaks being the most prominent) use it actively. Only in Germany flattr seems to be a known service.  This  situation is a problem for thus blog. Very few readers have even fewer flattr accounts… So I suppose the main aim for your blogger – to re-finance the server/hosting costs – cannot be achieved. Nevertheless, I would greatly appreciate your flattr love…

So the  main reason why I am using flattr now is twofold. It gives me the opportunity to flattr others and I hope to get to know the system better. Maybe I can use it in other projects more successfully!

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!

But apart from the mere presence in the blogosphere, do the Romanian politicians’ blogs have any real impact on their image or their electoral capital? This remains to be judged, taking into account the election results. However, what is more interesting and tells a lot about the personality of the blog owners is the way they use the blogs and their way of dealing with comments.Having spent the last fours years in the opposition, the Romanian social-democrats (PSD) are trying to win back people’s trust in the context of the electoral year 2008. Nothing unexpected, so far. However, this time they are making use of a bit more than the usual campaigning methods. Already for about a year now, quite a few leaders and notorious members of the Social-Democrat Party started having blogs, where they comment (some more frequently than others) the latest developments and describe, in the eve of elections, their electoral campaigning trips throughout the country.

Maybe not surprisingly, in dire need of a new, fresh image, the social-democrats are the most active new members of the Romanian political blogosphere. Be it a former President or Prime Minister or a Member of the European Parliament, they all try to catch the attention by describing (arguably some more eloquently than others) their daily business, reacting to various events and declarations, advertising and commenting books (theirs or others’) as well as their TV appearances. Thus, an important number of blog posts are issued every day, generating a reasonable amount of traffic and quite a few comments. Until now it actually sounds like a very good example of what a blog is meant to be: an open forum of ideas and debates. However, if you start reading the whole thread of comments (which sometimes can get extremely irritating, I confess), you soon realise that something is not quite as it should be. Most of the comments are just praising the author, in a completely uncritical way, the very same people (one merit has to be acknowledged: a very loyal, if small, audience was created around these blogs) comments in the very same way on all the blogs, the authors are very often complimenting and quoting each other and so on. Sometimes it really gives the impression of a spider web, a closed network where the elements are clearly positioned to reinforce each other, a  game of mirrors that, only when observed from outside, reveals its artificial, “closely directed” nature.

In fact, the blog of the Electronic Communication Service of PSD might give a hint on the organisation of the “red” Romanian blogosphere: it acts as a hub for all official blogs of PSD politicians but also includes some “recommended blogs” that, at a closer look, turn out to be the very active and passionate commentators of the former.

A few critical comments per post are allowed, of course, as a hint towards an “open dialogue”, but any unfavourable opinion (on their own blog or on any other) is quickly countered, usually giving birth to a new defensive blogpost. It is not the idea of replying to comments in itself that is bothering, it is more about the passionate towards aggressive tone adopted by the writers for their replies.

Baring all this in mind, it has to be said that some of the social-democrat bloggers  do provide some quality content. For instance, some of the Romanian MEPs (also, not surprisingly, some of the more active ones) are regularly updating their readers about their activity in Brussels and Strasbourg. In my opinion, this is an effort that has to be appreciated, as it sheds a bit of light on what is going on on the EU arena and on the involvement of the Romanian representatives.

An electoral device, purely an image tool, or a new defense mechanism, the blog has become a daily presence in the Romanian political arena and it is interesting to see if it will make a difference in the eyes of the electorate.

Written by Anda