Bloggingportal.eu

Many of you will be heading into the holiday season now and when you come back to life in 2010, you should become a fan of Bloggingportal.eu - if you haven't been a fan until now!

The Bloggingportal is the most comprehensive and most useful compilation of blogs and blog posts focused on EU and pan-European topics and we are close to 500 blogs by now, in many European languages (although English is still dominating), including hundreds of topics and a diverse mix of bloggers.

"Who is 'We' in the last sentence?", you may ask.

We are the editors of Bloggingportal.eu, about a dozen Eurobloggers so far. We are EU officials, communication experts, students and scholars or political activists from different EU countries, and we are tagging (almost) all posts that can be read through the full RSS-feed of the Bloggingportal.

In addition, we are choosing our preferred posts for the front page, mirrored in the Editors' Choice RSS-feed as well as in the Editors' Choice Twitter feed. And we add Europe-related posts from blogs not focused on European affairs to the feed whenever we find them.

But since we are doing this for no money just because we think it is worth promoting discussions about European and EU topics, we are also looking forward to your contribution in order to share some of the work. You can propose interesting blog post or full blogs that should be added to our feed(s).

You can also become an editor. We are especially looking for those of you who can help with less common European languages (since we are pretty much focused on English, French, Spanish, German and only a few other languages so far) or with programming and designing the interface of the platform to make it more user-friendly. So if you want to help to promote good European blog content, feel free to contact us and join the team!

Altogether, Bloggingportal.eu is a great example of a living Euroblogosphere that will hopefully become part of a pan-European blogosphere in the very near future - and we hope that the portal motivates you to contribute by writing your own blog or blog posts on European affairs and to become part of the family!

PS.: And yes, you can also become a fan of the Bloggingportal on Facebook!

Creating the European Public Sphere: Some remarks on the European Court of Justice Blog by Allard Knook

Allard Knook is writing a blog in which he summarises European Court of Justice rulings and on which I would like to briefly comment.

I intended to write these comments on his blog, but there the function is deactivated and a contact address is not to be found, either. So I'll comment here.

First, as a representative example, take a look at the latest post on the Court judgement Case C‑558/07, S.P.C.M. and others.

The first thing you will notice is that there is no link to the original judgement, so if you want to read the full text on your own, you have to go to the Court's website and research on your own. [Overlooked the link at the end of the posts; JF]

The second thing is that the introductory clause summarising the judgement is really short while the post is rather long and written in a very juridical style.

So while going through my RSS feeds, I usually go through Allard's posts just reading the first sentence, which always feels very unsatisfactory because I think it would be worth following the ECJ's decisions more closely.

But Allard is apparently writing for a distinct legally interested audience, focussing on "broadcasting" and passive consume of his texts with the comment function deactivated.

This is a pity, because he is doing an important work which could have a much broader effect outside the judicial world.

For comparison, look at this article on the European Court of Human Rights blog and the final paragraphs of the post:

" [...] Although again the Court does not formulate a general right to access to documents, what it does clarify is that once access on the national level is ordered (in this case by a court), such access should be effective and be given within a reasonable time. In this case, the authories had been so obstructive, that the European Court did not shy away from calling their behavior arbitrary.

A case for the history books - and for Court watchers too, of course!"

This puts into understandable words how important/ relevant/ interesting this judgement is in a wider context, and the whole article is rather written with the intention to explain the ruling than to produce a judicial summary.

In fact, the ECJblog would not have to change much. There is no need to change in style if this is what the main audience needs and wants.

But with a slightly longer "citizens' summary" (2-3 sentences) at the beginning, shortly explaining the importance and range of a judgement for the Union as a whole or for a certain policy area (e.g. in comparison to previous judgements), Allard's blog could have enormous effects into the wider European public.

I hope Allard will read these comments - my interest is in raising public awareness for European policy-making and law-shaping, and we should combine sources and resources to come closer to this goal!

Creating a European Public Sphere: The Hyperlink Story

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Inspired by a must-read article on Ribbonfarm titled "The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink" and following my recent critique of Jean Quatremer's way of "zero-link blogging", I would like to share some thoughts on the active creation of a European public sphere through hyperlinks.

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Let's start with the obvious: The creation of a genuine European public sphere would be the basis of a genuine European democracy, independent of the legal basis of the Union.

Yet, the lack of communicative links between national and European discussion threads and the lack of shared background knowledge, both across national borders and across groups on the European level, is impeding its emergence.

Because their method of story-telling is not based on links, traditional media cannot really contribute to a development that overcomes the divide of different national and policy-related public spheres. Their closed presentation of news usually does not foster cross-checking of facts and backgrounds, and they do not invite to participate in the debates around a particular topic.

The reason is that they miss the core element of virtual interaction: The hyperlink.

I think I had understood this before, but only after reading Venkatesh Rao's article on Ribbonfarm yesterday it really made sense.

So far, I thought of hyperlinks in EU-related articles more in the sense of a possibility to create connections between information, discussions, and people: They hold together what would be atomised thoughts, they tie in with what has been said before, and they are thus constructing the intertemporal and interpersonal reality of (still limited) European debates.

If their only function would be to be the glue between those who are writing, a system of reference and reverence, they would already fulfil an important function, one that I consider to be one of the main elements of blogging.

But in fact, the use of hyperlinks is not only a way to create connections to others. Hyperlinking allows completely new forms of writing about European politics, and those who understand this can actively contribute to the creation of a European public sphere, both within the institutions and in the wider public.

If hyperlinks become an active part of the language we speak when we write online, we can help to build bridges between those who are already inside the debate and those who want to join. And thanks to the inspiration from Venkatesh, I can give you a simple example.

Imagine the following sentence in a newspaper article (or anywhere else):

• "After long discussions in COREPER that have been echoed in the European blogosphere, a compromise proposal has been made that satisfies even the strongest critics."

And now the same sentence with hyperlinks (exemplified!):

• "After long discussions in COREPER that have been echoed in the European blogosphere, a compromise proposal has been made that satisfies even the strongest critics."

The first version of the sentence expects from the reader that she or he knows everything, from the abbreviation COREPER to past discussions, from the idea of a European blogosphere to a mysterious compromise proposal.

If you have the perfect reader, this sentence is read with delight.

But the same reader could also read the same sentence with hyperlinks, with the same delight. For her/him, there is no need to follow these hyperlinks.

However, anyone who has never heard about COREPER or who didn't know that there was a European blogosphere, someone who didn't follow the discussions in the past or who wasn't aware of positive reactions in the present, can read the sentence in combination with everything s/he finds through the hyperlinks, in accordance with her/his interests and knowledge.

In principal, this is very similar to what you know from Wikipedia, but there the links are more related to word-concept-relations while we can use them more actively, more creatively, mixing explanation and provocation, allusion and confusion, guiding the reader while interacting with other writers.

Hyperlinks in this sense are an interaction between the writer and other writers as well as an interaction between the writer and the reader(s), one that goes beyond the unidirectional sending of thoughts.

In the Euroblogosphere and in the overlapping Eurotwittersphere as well as in the European online news service EurActiv, the use of hyperlinks - although different in style and scope - is a widely accepted standard and a more or less natural practice in the creation of European discussions.

Links are used both as reverence mechanism between peers but also as cognitive bridges for those who would not understand the full extend of an article without this relational guidance by the author, without forcing the latter to (re)write what has already been written before.

Despite the many shortcomings one could list for the Euroblogosphere, and probably also for EurActiv, this is definitely a crucial plus one should not underestimate.

Ultimately, everyone who is writing about European politics has to understand that the audience we speak to is very diverse, in terms of nationality, involvement in EU-related matters, knowledge of technical details etc.

If we want to create a European public sphere, we have to be aware of this diversity, and address it with the possibilities digital writing offers. In particular, since usually people tend to blame the many official languages for the failure of the EU to create common debates and to become a common polity.

Yet, it is not so much the number of languages as it is the inability of newcomers to easily follow and join European debates, debates which are basically held between EU experts using the language of EU experts - not because they want to keep others out but because this language is the most efficient to discuss EU-related matters.

The conclusion is that we may write texts that are full of implicit references, EU-specific language and filled with technical details and abbreviations.

But if we have an interest in involving not only those already heavily involved, we have to be creative and effective in the use of meaningful, text-based hyperlinks, making the implicit explicit and the technical easily comprehensible for the wider audience we want to reach out to without losing our immediate target group(s).

Creating a European public sphere is thus absolutely possible - we just need to use the right hyperlinks!

Why Tony Barber gets it wrong (on Barroso and on European democracy)

In a new article, Tony Barber of the Financial Times' "Brussels Blog" argues that the centre-left parties now rallying against Barroso have no right to do so.

He says that since they failed to nominate a candidate against Barroso before the elections, they now should hide in their basements and let things go.

I basically agree with his criticism of the failure of the other parties to nominate their own candidate(s) against EPP-baby Barroso before the elections, but Tony gets it wrong when he concludes from this failure that they don't have the right to oppose Barroso now.

To the contrary: The European democracy needs visible opposition, at any time, and especially from forces within the European Parliament. Only if voters see that their vote actually mattered, that "their" parties oppose a candidate of another party, they are able to understand that a political choice during EP elections actually has an influence on EU politics.

Barroso might still be elected, because it remains questionable whether the non-EPP groups would be able to gather a majority around an own candidate like Verhofstadt.

But if the rising opposition against Barroso - who, by the way, was not an EPP candidate when the party ran for the last European elections - is able to show that he is not unquestionable, that he needs to defend himself instead of being passed without democratic scrutiny, this would already be a success of the European Parliament as the guardian of citizens' influence on the European level.

Tony Barber's vision seems to be that of a technocratic European Union, one where political competition may only take place in an election campaign, which is absolutely wrong - so please, Liberals, Greens, Socialists, and independents, rally against Barroso as much as you can!

Read also: Barros vs. Barroso by JEF Europe & Stop Barroso - Too little too late by Kosmopolit

The next European Commission: Th!nk09 initiative

I am at the finale of the Th!nk about it blogging competition.

One of the ideas we have come up over lunch is to try to find out who will be possible Commissioners from all 27 member countries in the next European Commission.

We want to use collective knowledge of Th!nkers and the wider blogosphere to come up with a list of possible candidates before the national media will have managed to figure it out. And I am sure we can do it.

So please go to Jon Worth's blog and comment on his article, informing who could be the next Commissioner from your country.

Watch Nosemonkey and other EU bloggers on TV

Even though the elections are over and many might turn their backs to this topic, I recommend watching the bloggers from Nosemonkey, Shiraz Socialists, and EU Referendum discuss on BBC before and after the European Parliament elections 2009 here on Vimeo.