Great longread. Some excerpts: 1) It's a serious problem: "these online offenses are enough to make a woman want to click away from Twitter, shut her laptop, and power down her phone. Sometimes, we do withdraw: Pew found that from 2000 to 2005, the percentage of Internet users who participate in online chats and discussion groups dropped from 28…

"One cultural tool for constructing Europe has been through official symbols aiming to emotionally strengthen citizens’ identification with basic values of the European project.... The fifth symbol is the euro, introduced in 2002. When trust in European institutions is shaking, so is the belief in those symbols and the identification of and with …

"Change of direction speaks volumes for change in German attitudes triggered by the euro crisis." ... Maybe some EU functionaries need to get out of their luxury offices now and then, and talk to the people. Then they'll be able to carry out policies which are rooted in practical life." - Key centre-Right German party adopts new hardline Eu…

Landfillharmonic. Watch. Share.

One guy, a camera and a whiteboard (and millions of views and a book and lots more). Sigh. I miss my super huge whiteboard.

“Comments from readers are probably one of the thorniest problems for online publishers of all kinds… and the methods for dealing with them are all over the map... We spoke to online editors and community managers at 104 news organisations from 63 countries across the globe, plus a selection of experts from the corporate and academic worlds to id…

Interesting survey of HuffPo, Techcrunch & other experiences with changing commenting systems and policies. - HuffPost policy banishes trolls — and drives away some frequent commenters | Poynter.

"Blamestorming is a neologisms describing a meeting, which means to be formally a brainstorming. But the real purpose is to find a scapegoat" - from the EC's inestimably good Think Tank wiki

An alternative to Popular Science's approach: "Climate change articles trigger some of the most heated discussions on Ars Technica... a scientific matter with political ramifications, it's also the focus of astroturfers (fake grassroots movements), trolls, and the willfully scientifically illiterate. At Ars, we take trolling very seriously... we…

"ScribbleLive is an important tool for covering events and breaking news as well as for live chats. Journalists should get adept at using Scribble (or other liveblogging tools such as CoverItLive, Liveblogpro or Superdesk). But be sure to use it in tandem with Twitter. You don’t have to choose between them." - Using ScribbleLive, you can livetwee…

"If you have been following European politics and media, online and offline, for the past 5-6 years, you cannot but notice the genesis of a European Public Sphere . This sphere may be more or less evolved depending on national media, but it clearly there, much more than it was before the last European elections and the before the start of the cris…

Quote of the day: "rekindling enthusiasm for Europe with new banking regulations... is like boosting libido by reading the instructions on a packet of condoms" - Can the European Center Hold? - NYTimes.com

"we essentially write new content that we then throw away at the end of the day. Content shouldn’t die by design... topical contexualization... means guiding readers through large, convoluted news topics. ProPublica’s topic pages get us closer to contextualizing huge topics. For every major series that they cover over time, there’s a landing page…

How nice to see a positive answer to the perennial question: Where are the MEPs?

A refreshing focus on what matters: "Voters are frustrated that they exert less influence than ever over elites... a restoration of the people’s dwindling faith in political institutions at national and EU levels is at once the biggest and the most elusive prize... decline in public confidence in Europe’s governing classes is wider, and it rel…

Terrific article: "people are more likely to be moved by information that challenges their prejudices if they’re prevented from responding to it straightaway and it has time to sink in, to steep... On social media... the person you disagree with isn’t just misinformed but moronic, corrupt, evil. Complaints become rants. Rants become diatribes... …

To think I almost worked on their dotcom project 12 years ago (shiver): "Lots of researchers post PDFs of their own papers on their own web-sites. It’s always been so, because even though technically it’s in breach of the copyright transfer agreements that we blithely sign, everyone knows it’s right and proper. Preventing people from making their…

A neat approach to using social media to "improve science communication & make it more direct, responsive, and accurate". Given the huge parallels with EU communications ... "Nature editors & reporters get little status markers (aka flairs) to identify their role at Nature ... About a half-dozen keep an eye on r/science to see if any of the top …

"The process is called "seeding." While an old-hat to online advertising pros, it may come as something of a revelation to the rest of us who often wonder just how some YouTube videos blow up with tens of millions of views, while others languish in the humble thousands. "Every viral video that is very successful like this needs to have a good see…

Innovation loves diversity. Europe's diverse. Why isn't Europe innovative? "teams of smart people from different backgrounds are more likely to come up with fresh ideas more quickly than individuals or like-minded groups do. When a diverse range of experts interact... the solution space becomes broader, increasing the chance that a more innova…

"Too many companies make the mistake of assuming their global audience speaks English. I hear it all the time. “We don’t need to translate. All of our customers can read English.” And “English is the language of the world. Everyone speaks English.”" - Rule #2. Everyone Speaks English, Right? | Content Rules, Inc.

"As your company’s content strategy becomes more sophisticated, it’s important to consider different types of media for your outreach efforts. The internet has changed the paradigm from “please tell my story” to finding platforms that allow you to tell your own tale. A content strategy helps you identify needs, prioritize projects, and invest limi…

"Building kickass content strategies focused on appealing to users isn’t difficult, though, and will always yield better results and not succumb to one of Google’s future algorithm updates. "

"Do You Need a Separate Mobile Content Marketing Strategy?"

3 cheers for less warm fuzziness! "In 2014, we need to move away from measuring our content marketing with soft engagement metrics such as ‘retweets’, ‘shares’, ‘linkbacks’ and ‘Likes’, and start having adult conversations about ROI. ... whilst engagement may make your marketing team feel warm and fuzzy inside, it counts for nought if your conte…

" Content marketing is really about providing valuable information or content to current and potential customers for the purpose of building trust, branding, awareness, and positive sentiment. A successful content marketing campaign establishes you as an expert in your field, and that sets the groundwork for a long-term business relationship."

"My favorite part ... is that I’m usually wrong" Refreshing!

Remind me to buy this guy's books: "There is no way by which events can be directly recorded in our brains; they are experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, different in every individual, differently reinterpreted or reexperienced whenever recollected. . . . Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each…

by RAND: "What will be the key societal challenges that the EU will need to address within the next two decades? ... a review of literature, data and insights from over 200 international experts ... explores evidence and uncertainties underpinning global societal trends and the challenges they provide for policymakers. ... put in place a lastin…

Starting to see the point of 1secondeveryday.com