A novelty has appeared in the European blogosphere: bloggingportal.eu. As they themselves put it, it could become a “new way to read blogs about EU affairs”. The blogaggregator syndicates the content from currently 278 blogs about Europe and the European Union in as many languages as possible. By also structuring and rating the different posts they aggregate, it could become a powerful tool in empowering Europe’s online democracy.
http://www.bloggingportal.eu/
I strongly believe in the ability of blogging to enhance democracy by facilitating discussion between differing opinions while accomodating like-minded individuals to connect and share. Certainly within the European Union blogging must become a strong democratic forum to enable people to bridge the huge distances and languages in Europe separating the North from the South and the East from the West.
However, the development of a European blogoshpere has not been an easy task, due to Europe’s diversity. It has been a working progress slowly advancing with initiatives such as the blogplatform blogactiv, multi-author Euroblogs such as cafebabel, Fistfull of Euros or social Europe blog and finally there have also been individual bloggers such as me, perhaps you or Jon Worth.
Jon Worth has also been one of the key people behind the latest bloggingportal initiative and my insider source for this post. Some other key protagonists are programmer Stefan Happer (Politik Portal) and the EU bloggers Kosmopolit, DJ Nozem and Le Croche-Pied.
For an interesting read to get a better grasp of the EU blogosphere, you might also want to take a look at this overview and a structural analysis of how to read EUblogs.
Have fun in the sphere and make sure you find your way back out again!
