At last, an opportunity to blog about gardening and EU comms in the same post. Those who managed to sit through some or all of my Prezicast on the EU online public space would have picked up the fact that my day job involves helping various parts of the Commission communicate their policies and programmes. [...]

Via @Niemanlab, a fascinating article on the “Citizens Agenda”, a collaboration between The Guardian and NYU’s Studio 20 program: ” an experimental space dedicated to determining how to get people’s voices heard in campaigns that, though they purport to be concerned with the people’s interests, all too often ignore them.” – Civic journalism 2.0: The [...]

Over on edition 627 of For Immediate Release, they open their news section (timestamp 04:30) by bringing together a couple of news stories on how the US military is engaging with what could euphemistically be called their ‘challenging public’: young Muslim men in the Middle East, Afghanistan, etc. Apparently there’s a Digital Engagement Team, scouring [...]

I’m going to try to break the habit of a lifetime this [morning/lunchtime/evening] and actually attend a physical [conference/workshop/seminar/PRpissup] about the EU and social media, something so self-evidently oxymoronic that I’ve often been tempted to drop the ‘oxy’. But, life being what it is, I probably won’t make it due to [family issues/overwork/rampaging gerbil infestation]. [...]

A few weeks ago I was asked to give a training on the EU online public space to a group of political science PhDs taking part in the EXACT Marie-Curie training programme (pre-session discussion here). Being a sucker for flattery I agreed, but being short for time I based it on the Prezi I did [...]

In response to @SocialEUJ, because Twitter sometimes (usually) doesn’t give you the room one needs … On November 8, MEPs will discuss ’10 concrete political proposals’ for creating the European public sphere via digital media, developed by IHECS (Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales) and their partners via Socialeuropeanjournalism.com. The site looks good. At [...]

“The Filter Bubble”, by MoveOn.org foreign policy director Eli Pariser, shows that the forces creating the Brussels Bubble are about to be reinforced by technology, operated invisibly – and with impunity – by a handful of companies. When I launched Blogactiv in 2007 I had some interesting experiences engaging with eurosceptics of the more rabid variety. [...]

The answer to this post’s title may be so obvious that you wonder why it needs writing, but Jon Worth’s idea to get a Blogging Day for greater European Parliament transparency together got me thinking beyond the knee-jerk reaction. One of the tenets of transparency is full disclosure, so this is where I point out [...]

Next Tuesday (14/6) I’ll be running a short panel with Gergely Polner, spokesman for the HU Presidency of the Council of EU, three other BloggingPortal editors  (Joe Litobarski, Alia Papageorgiou and Ronny Patz), and Dr Mark Pack, one of the editors of Lib Dem Voice in the UK, on “why there isn’t a bigger and [...]

If you’re like me and almost everyone else I know, you’ve got a To Do list overflowing with emails starred in various colours, Twitter favourites, starred RSS items, stuff bookmarked ‘Do’ or ‘In’ on diigo or delicious, unlistened-to-podcasts, unread books, unwatched documentaries, scribbled post-its and more. And you certainly haven’t got enough time to read [...]