Which Is The Most Influential EU Policy Blog?

Posted by Stuart Langridge on 14/07/10

A Brussels based consultancy, Waggener Edstrom, has released a report about the level of influence in the EU policy area by bloggers.

It focuses on the Brussels based, English language EU blogosphere. Unsurprisingly, Blogactiv.eu and bloggingportal.eu are considered to be central to the blogosphere. Happily, 9 of the top 40 most influential blogs in the Influence Index are hosted on Blogactiv. They are (in no particular order):

Forum for the Future of Agriculture
Stanley’s blog
Mathew Lowry’s Tagsmanian Devil
Rhein on Energy and Climate
Geothermania
Eucomed
Euro-sante/Euro-health
European Innovation
Digital Civil Rights In Europe

Congratulations and many thanks to them all, from everyone involved in Blogactiv.

The report was launched with an event in Brussels, attended by number one blogger, Gavin Hewitt of the BBC, Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake, Richard Freedman (Press Officer for European Parliament President Buzek) and John Jolliffe from Waggener Edstrom. The panel offered their thoughts on the size and influence of the blogging landscape before engaging in an interesting question and answer session.

I took the time to interview John before the event started. You can watch his thoughts on the report and EU blogosphere here:

The survey used four main criteria for judging the policy influence of blogs – Reach, Content, Buzz and Target Audience. My questions to you, dear EU policy blog reader or blogger, are these:

How would you rate the influence level of blogs?
How often would such a study be relevant and informative?
What are your ‘top 3′ EU blogs?
In a study focused on the English language blogosphere, can there ever be more relevant blogs than those written by the major publications (BBC, FT) or Commissioners?

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

For what they are worth, my thoughts are that the report could have made the urls of the blogs a little more easy to locate!! Unless you are in this world, finding some of those specialist blogs listed may not be easy.

Blog Syndication, blogging, English
Comments [RSS 2.0]

9 Responses to Which Is The Most Influential EU Policy Blog? »»

  1. Mathew
    Comment by Mathew | 2010/07/15 at 12:47:47

    Hmm, any survey which lists my blog in any Top 20 list clearly doesn’t have much more than 20 blogs to look at, which is a sad testament to the slow pickup of EU-oriented social media.

    But the survey is a contribution to developing that ecosystem, so it doesn’t deserve the stick it got yesterday (including from me: see my mea culpa).

    My favourite blogger who posts regularly, for what it’s worth, is Ralf Grahn, a refreshingly unpretentious and very generous blogger. European Citizen is also massively underrated. And I really enjoy (and am secretly rather envious of) Writing for (y)EU, who are having a lot of fun exploring online editorial models.

  2. Stuart Langridge
    Comment by Stuart Langridge | 2010/07/15 at 13:58:20

    Mathew, Mathew, you are always so hard on yourself and your blog. There is some fine writing and thinking there. I for one think that it is one of the centrepieces of the EU blogosphere.

    Why?

    Because with so many policy areas, everyone seems to write about something different. However, the areas we are almost all interested in are the EU, communication and blogging. Your blog covers those few common areas.

  3. Eurogoblin
    Comment by Eurogoblin | 2010/07/15 at 15:11:39

    I wanted to support the report – I really did. Ultimately, however, it was based on some very poor research. The #3 blog has written only four posts in 2010, and only 12 posts over the course of its entire lifetime. This seriously breaks the selection criteria set out in the report.

    I wish them the best of luck with the next report (if they make this an annual thing), but they’re going to have to tighten up their selection criteria, cast a wider net and make their methodology more transparent.

    P.S. I would second Mathew’s choice of Ralf and Conor – along with many others (blogging in more than just English).


Trackbacks & Pingbacks »»

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