Opinions

EU blogathon

The veritable online feast of information about the EU and its policies that is Euractiv has updated its list of MEP bloggers. The site lists 9 MEPs who blog; representing a wonderous 1.1% of our elected European representatives. The unelected Commission do better with a strike rate of 4 out of 27 (a shade under 15% in case you wondered).

One aspect the article from Euractiv doesn’t touch upon is the flipside of the blogging coin; the potential impact of blogs on policymaking. Research conducted in the US at George Washington’s Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet suggests that around 90% of congressional staff read blogs on a daily basis. We are clearly still some distance from the form and influence of US blogs highlighted in the July edition of Mother Jones, especially given that many of the EU blogs listed come from journalists resident in traditional media outlets.

One also has to wonder whether our blogging MEPs are reading other blogs on a regular basis. Even serial MEP blogger Richard Corbett does not for example link to other like minded individuals in the blogosphere – not illustrating the kind of network effect that academic Thomas Burg notes as the main features of blogs in the Euractiv piece.

However, we note with happiness Mr. Corbett’s first foray into YouTube earlier this week, which for the sake of political neutrality we have embedded below. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on one’s point of view, Corbett steers clear of both Bob the Builder and titillating sex clips and concentrates on the new EU treaty; all very much in the style of the man who co-pens the imaginatively entitled yet authoritative “The European Parliament”, which incidentally is a favored prize for many an internal FH Brussels quiz.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p-Dd0CekW8]

5 Comments

Mirror, mirror on the wall… « Public Affairs 2.0
March 25, 2008 | 5:40 PM

[...] their tactics, we have a certain sympathy for the spoofers. We commented before that Richard’s blog, despite good content, does lack certain elements expe.... In that case, we saw that Richard rectified a lack of links to other blogs in the days following [...]

Providing new energy for EU policy debates « Public Affairs 2.0
October 01, 2007 | 2:25 PM

[...] less room for informed commentators who seek to lead policy debates. And as we have noted before, the EU blogosphere continues to expand exponentially, yet many of these blogs are general in nature (as this one is), [...]

fhbrussels
August 13, 2007 | 10:21 AM

It is great to see that since this posting Mr. Corbett has now created his own blogroll on his blog. Thanks to him our count of MEP bloggers has risen to 11 and we have now added fellow Socialist bloggers Jan Wiersma MEP and Mary Honeyball MEP to our own list.

Brusselsblogger
August 10, 2007 | 1:39 PM

While I am not sure that the EurActiv list of MEPs who blog is authoritative or complete I think the message is right: MEPs are facing a big challenge regarding online communication. Just like many other elected on national or regional level they will find out that they not only have to justify their work when it come to be re-elected, but the need to do this in a frequent, professional and continuous way. Some recommendations, to get started: 1) organise your MEP startpage in a chronological way 2) link to material available on the EP website (not only the profile page but far more important to reports, document and your speeches, questions in plenary 3) put up your press releases on teh web the same moment you send it out per mail 4) install an rss feed on your website and let yournalists know about it 5) team up with other MEPs and create common thematic blogs

How to practice safe blogging « Public Affairs 2.0
July 25, 2007 | 1:04 PM

[...] 25th, 2007 Our EU blogathon article quietly lamented the small number of MEPs who blog. It seems to us that the most formidable [...]

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