Larsson. Not why but how: reading Euroblogs. A few lines from a typical conversation when I’m asked what I do in Brussels: “I work as a website designer and write a blog about EU politics.” Response from whoever I’m talking to: “Oh, I don’t read blogs.” Rather than the rather simple answer – well, yes you should – a more nuanced and technological solution is called for. First of all: why read Euroblogs? Because excellent analysis and debate about EU matters is being produced every day on blogs – content that rivals and is a complement to the main online sources such as Euractiv and EUObserver. For links to good quality Euro-blogs, try Getting A Grip of the Euro-blogosphere.
Secondly: how do you best read Euroblogs? That’s where it gets a bit tricky. The diagram above shows the 4 levels of blogging about EU politics. In order to drive up readership and foster communities of people who read and write about the same things, Multi-Author Euroblogs offer a partial solution. Overall that’s just too complicated. Bloggingportal.eu | home. Blogs on European affairs are written by insiders. There is a need for these EU specialists and academics to bring their debates to the digital public. What is the state of the blogosphere in Europe?
Ronny Patz is an editor at Bloggingportal.eu, which aggregates the content of 904 blogs on European affairs. He argues that most blogs are written by insiders in the EU bubble and that a fresh look from the outside by more academic and citizen bloggers would enrich the EU blogosphere and provide a much needed way of holding the EU and its politicians to account.
As part of the EU bubble, the EU blogosphere, very much like the EU institutions, is a sphere apart. This sphere, it seems, is very much focused on the narrow lines of Brussels activities, which do not really grasp the more Europe-wide debates that go beyond. The reason is that EU blogs are often written by direct or indirect EU insiders, people who either live in Brussels or whose bodies and brains are frequently travelling, at least virtually, to the hills and valleys of power of the Belgian capital. Please read our comments policy before commenting. About the author. Happy birthday: Bloggingportal.eu turns 3. Update: See the collective anniversary post by 12 Bloggingportal.eu editors! Tomorrow, on 26 January 2012, Bloggingportal.eu celebrates its third birthday. I haven’t been an editor right from the start, but I followed the development of the portal right from the beginning, and for me it feels as if the journey we went through was much longer than tree years.
So let me take stock of Bloggingportal.eu and the euroblogosphere as I see it today. For those not familiar with the portal: We, the editors, run this platform on a voluntary basis, without any funds nor any legal structure. On Bloggingportal.eu, we try to list all blogs covering EU affairs, tag their posts according to certain topics, and select blog articles we find particularly interesting as “Editors’ Choice” for the portal’s front page, the RSS-feed, the Twitter feed and the daily email newsletter (subscribe on the website). Now that was the upside. We editors know each other for several years now.