Overview: Politics

Brown Moses made his name crowdsourcing information in conflict zones, such as analysing weapons in Syria ... from his front room in Leicester, England... using social media, open source tools, and public information to verify details that news organizations can miss. Today, he's launching a site to pool his and others knowledge together in one…

"The absolute worst thing that can happen as a result of this furore is that (a) Facebook keep any and all data they collect private, and run these sorts of studies behind closed doors, and (b) scientists wouldn’t want to touch their data anyway, for fear of public outrage. This would be disastrous, because social media hosts a wealth of informati…

Truly excellent, insightful piece. "if Facebook did make the content that users see more positive, should we simply be happy? ... If Alice is happier when she is oblivious to Bob’s pain because Facebook chooses to keep that from her, are we willing to sacrifice Bob’s need for support and validation? This is a hard ethical choice ... Facebook is…

'Innovation' threaded its way through a lot of the resources added to my TumblrHub last week: from innovation-friendly management through to innovative Content Management Systems for tomorrow's newsmedia business models and personal productivity tools.

"Though the political conversation about Europe has gained in importance everywhere in recent years, the truth is that Europeans are not having the same conversation. That is a serious problem for Europe’s leaders: the electoral earthquake is big enough for them to feel compelled to respond to their citizens’ economic and political discontent; but…

"The only kind of moderation that scales with the community is the community. ... Through the trust system, Discourse communities develop a natural immune system that repels the trolls, spam, and hate that eventually tear apart communities on other forum software. - Stack Overflow Founder's Next Big Thing: Reinventing Online Communities – ReadWri…

"companies will be able to operate throughout the region if they fulfill the interpretation of European rules from only one country’s privacy authority ... [so] technology companies ... could set up shop in the European country with the most lenient interpretation of data privacy." - E.U. Debates Which Nation Will Regulate Web Privacy - NYTimes.c…

"The experience of talking about race, ethnicity and culture on the Internet is nearly always deeply disenchanting. People don't even talk past each other; they talk right through each other. Prejudices harden. We find ourselves confirming our worst stereotypes of one another. And that's before the slurs fly." Some great lessons for making it wor…

Over 70% of EU voters did not vote for the EU. Where now?

As Michael Silverman puts it, "a brilliant online community has more potential than your current social networking strategy", and he isn't even talking about EU communications. The only downside, not mentioned, is that convening a community requires: - web publishing technologies which do not date from the previous millennium - real online commu…

“political class detached, remote, incompetent, venal, illegitimate”. Neat #EP2014 explainer video from @guardian. Quote from European elections: union left sullen by fury and frustration with political class

Great example of modern US longform content from Vox, where they use a specific style to link to one of their 'content cards'. Plus a killer quote on the 'blame Brussels' syndrome: "... banks that owned eurozone government debt were saved, and so were institutions around the world ... Meanwhile, politicians got to take credit for keeping their c…

The mind boggles ... "perhaps the creepiest outgrowth of cryptocurrency 2.0: distributed autonomous organizations, or DAOs. Based on charters taking the form of code on a peer-to-peer network, these are entities that could automate many of the tasks of a conventional organization with varying levels of human input. For instance, a DAO could act d…

" If we wanted more email subscribers, we’d have to make it easier for people to subscribe." Quartz's new approach to enewslettre subscription, which has seen daily subscriber rates double since February, is like the 'Quick Subscribe' feature I always propose for online community sites: - some users may create an account to subscribe, but most wo…

Why does this brilliant video remind me of the preponderance of arts graduates in the #bxlsbbl?It’s really worth a look. And then another one. The acting here is actually superb. Watch the Expert’s expression run the gamut from shock to resignation in just a few minutes! (that one took me 20 years…)- via LaughingSquid: The Expert, A Hilarious Sket…

There are more good recommendations in here than can be summarised, but if I had to choose one, it's: "Integrate the developers and editors, from where they sit to whom they report to. If you’re going to do social journalism well, you’re becoming a technology platform company... Almost all the important breakthroughs in social media have come fro…

"it looks like web firms operating in the EU are about to face a very different regulatory landscape. This would include much higher fines for breaches of data protection law in the EU, the limited right for citizens to demand the erasure of their personal data, and strict limitations on what can be done with EU citizens’ data outside the union. A…

Well, plus ca change - absolutely none of the things some BloggingPortal editors said we'd do after our meeting in January have been done, apart from our own posts and what Stefan did, which is ironic given that he told us he had no time to do anything.

FalseA German journalist and camera crew have fun with the EP gravy train in “Scandale au Parlement Européen : Argent facile, champagne à gogo et autres privilèges. This sort of film iseasy to make and so becoming commonplace. And people in the Brussels Bubble wonder why they are not so widely loved elsewhere?

worth repeating for everyone who thinks that the path to democracy in the EU is measured in column inches...

This post started out as a comment to Blogging, content discovery and the European public sphere, Kosmopolito's post marking Bloggingportal's 5th birthday (all posts and more). However Kosmo, one of the old guard of EU bloggers (and currently jobhunting, btw) raised more than a couple of good questions, so my comment needed a larger home…

"“Fished out of the shadows, old news coverage in China’s media can provide clues to the family connections of government officials as reporters investigate their financial dealings.”"

Original linkTonight I'll be toddling along to Grilling Kippers, a UKIP-focused anti-Eurosceptic campaign from deep within the Brussels Bubble.

Great idea for explaining EU affairs or just wishful thinking? "A new game called Fantasy Geopolitics (think Fantasy Football meets Model United Nations) is radically changing the way high school students in Minnesota are interacting with the news." - How a High School Teacher Is 'Gamifying' World News

US authorities seem particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias. Anyone remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B ? "FBI was already convinced they had their man, so they rationalized away the non-matching elements ... Mayfield being jailed without charge; his home and office burgled by the FBI; his client-attorney privilege violated; his lif…

There’s nothing more devastating than a rigorous debunk sprinkled liberally with acid. A model to keep in mind whenever setting the record straight: be entertaining.

Last Thursday I finally caught up with Eric Maurice of PressEurop, which recently had its plug pulled by the EC following their decision to cancel its renewal tender some weeks after publishing it.

"Instead of leading on this issue as the European country that is best prepared to do so, Britain undermines what it likes most about the EU—the single market—by challenging one of its cornerstones—free movement of EU citizens."

A good pro-EU article ends with: "How dare these foreigners impose on us clean beaches, food labelling, consumer protection, lead-free petrol, road safety, access to healthcare abroad, cheaper mobile phone charges and real chocolate? ... If we want to bathe in sewage, landfill our countryside, guzzle mechanically recovered meat, and pay through t…

Davastating analysis in the FT of "... three visible failures: First, the economic, financial, intellectual and political elites mostly misunderstood the consequences of headlong financial liberalisation ... The rescue was necessary. But the belief that the powerful sacrificed taxpayers to the interests of the guilty is correct. Second, ... a gl…