I just realized that my previous post was MountEUlympus post no. 100. After two and a half years of writing about the EU, this blog is still here, and it is here to stay for a while. Just a few musings about EU blogging before I turn back to proper content in my next post.
It is a rewarding experience to blog about European affairs. The last 30 months in blogging have seen me challenged by Prof. Andrew Moravcsik, reprinted in the newspaper New Europe (New Europe pdf unavailable), responded to by development economist Ha Joon Chang, participate in the Th!nk about it 2 blogging competition on climate change, publish a bachelor thesis on the European blogosphere, become a co-editor of Bloggingportal.eu, discover the workings of the Council of Ministers, cover the EPP Summit and many other experiences. Most of all, however, blogging has put me into an international community in which new ideas are put forward and debated every day and thereby significantly increased my knowledge of European affairs.
As I said, it is a rewarding experience to be a blogger and I can only encourage every citizen reading this post to think about starting his or her own blog. Given that European politics are rarely debated in national public spheres, European debates frequently develop in the blogosphere from where they are sometimes upscaled to national media. Even though the European blogosphere might sometimes appear a little like the electronic version of the Brussel bubble, participation is open to everybody and new entrants are welcomed and listened to. Maybe you will be next?
I'd say you underestimate the amount of debate on EU affairs in national spheres today. But you do this with a good aim: Make Euroblogging look even more important than it already is…! ;)
ReplyDeleteHello Ron, thanks a lot for your comment. I think you are right. There is more EU debate in national spheres than a few years ago (a large part certainly due to the Eurocrisis, for the better or for the worse).
ReplyDeleteWhat I forgot is that Euroblogs/Twitter can also give feedback to policy-makers before feedback comes from the national public spheres. Thereby a single blogger can make his voice better heard - as a citizen directly involved in European decision-making.