During the Cold War, the Soviets conducted over 10,000 disinformation operations, with up to 15000 KGB officers. Europe a target since 2015. Goal: weaken western democracy from within. This article sets out their most pertinent tactics:1) Narratives: post-Western world (the West no longer dominates); anti-(elite, EU, NATO) narratives; danger narra…

to make participatory democracy a reality, it is essential to avoid only paying lip-service to the idea of participation — and give citizens a real say...European federalists are hoping to gain momentum for treaty change. Many member states are afraid of that very outcome...Citizens’ participation is being tested out far more commonly across Europ…

news industry trade associations are corruptly cashing in their political capital ... their members are newspapers, and politicians are scared of them — in desperate acts of protectionism to attack platform companies. The result is a raft of legislation that will damage the internet and in the end hurt everyone, including journalists and especiall…

The Brussels Bubble triumphalism over the #EUelections2019 turnout rate is staggeringly self-absorbed.- thread

It’s taken me over ten years to move from enthusiasm, through frustration into a Zen-like state where I no longer blog about EU comms. But when the Eurobloggers called, I had to answer ;)- my link in the #EU09vs19 blog chain …

the Commission had joined forces with one of Europe’s most powerful foundations to keep the European debate on track "... developing new ways and instruments to reach and engage the public”... the Bertelsmann empire is stepping into the breach. With its staunchly pro-European ideals, deep pockets and broad reach ... could end up giving Europe’s a…

copyright organisations ... succeeded in their lobbying ... establish a narrative that those who criticised the Directive were reeled in by hysterical propaganda or puppets of Google... or against cultural creators... intensity of the lobbying stepped up ... Half of Strasbourg was wearing yellow #yes2copyright sashes ... two years of implementat…

three documents from Europe about regulating the net:.... I see danger for the net and its freedoms posed by corporate protectionism and a rising moral panic about technology... Articles 11 & 13: Protectionism gone mad... Article 11 link tax... likely cover many of the snippets shown ... to give you an idea of what they lead to….No exceptions are …

There are many grassroots communities emerging with vital understandings of the importance of continued EU membership... an agile swarm of passionate activist communities can run rings around a top-down Westminster-based operation and engage voters whom politicians cannot reach.... Such is the multifaceted nature of our EU membership that a single…

the next iteration of technology applied to politics will be a huge leap forward with a greater ability to target people... address each of the 156 million of registered voters on the US with personalized messages.... a falsehood delivered in a personalized way is likely to be more efficient but less visible than a blatant lie put on Twitter; it w…

When it comes to how Europeans identify themselves, there are actually six different “political tribes,”... the current polarized debate of “pro-EU” versus “anti-EU” fails to capture the complexity ... 36 percent were the “hesitant Europeans”... proud to belong to the EU but also concerned about issues like immigration.... “contented Europeans.…

Engaging Europeans with the EU requires a new Brussels Bubble culture - fourth of several posts written in reaction to Luc van den Brand’s Reaching out to EU Citizens: A New Opportunity.

Could hybrid crowdfunding allow public Institutions to support citizen-driven projects without killing them in the cradle?- 2nd post in reaction to Luc van den Brande’s Reaching out to EU Citizens: A New Opportunity

Did participants in the ‘Future of Europe’ process influence President Juncker’s State of the European Union speech, as promised? Of course not. Rightly.- 2nd post in preparation for my EWRC 2017 workshop on online communities and public participation in policy

it won’t be the thousands of citizens’ dialogues orchestrated by the EU Commission across Europe over the summer that will re-engage EU citizens with Europe... There are an estimated 30,000 corporate lobbyists operating in Brussels, dominating the EU policy process. While NGOs have increasingly been included in EU policymaking... under-staffed ..…

6th Scenario – More EuropeanismDemocracy needs an identity foundation that binds individuals into the demos... Europe does not have that. The proof?... There are no successful pro-European populists!The local and particular cannot be based on the general and universal.... There has to be something more ...

Fighting people with facts only makes them cling to their beliefs more strongly, further polarising our damaged societies. Different tactics are needed, and they start closer to home than you think...I ... [once] thought that Euroscepticism could be beaten by reasoned argument... In 2007, however, I met ... and argued with – my first batch of euro…

EU money flows from Brussels into thousands of projects and ideas. Why does nobody notice?... some of the worst storytellers happen to be located in Brussels ... majorities in society and the media believe that the European Union belongs in the dustbin of history... eternal Brussels congresses where elitist Eurocrats engage in nothing but myopic …

“Europe’s leaders... working within a EUropean context, but answering to voters who see issues from national perspectives… With independent journalism looking like an endangered species, a EU communication strategy that helped European media build the European Public Sphere would be a smarter longterm move...

Bad news for “jean-wearing Post It Note wranglers” everywhere... the UK’s Government Digital Service “left huge swathes of the British government in disarray… [replacing] useful online services with trendy webpages bereft of useful information“... GDS has been rather influential in Brussels, so a sign of things to come?

Is primetime TV advertising the right way to connect citizens to the EU?... I’ll leave the last words to my teenage, Belgian kids, who presumably are amongst the audiences targeted: But what is it they are they trying to sell?... Why isn’t this money being spent on the projects?

Apache Stanbol, an opensource semantic analysis project... spun off from an EC funded research project--- can ‘annotate’ a text... in any language... rebooted BloggingPortal would provide an ideal platform for ‘training’ Stanbol to annotate other European languages.

Do we have a EU online public space? “If you know what EUR-LEX is, or have already forgotten how many Presidents the EU has and why, then you are part of the Brussels Bubble” - Speech, Civil Society Day, EESC, May 2012

"10 things you still need to know about social media / social business“ by Olivier Blanchard got me thinking about the gulf that still separates the EU Institutions from the effective use of social media. Let's run down his list & see where it leads.

So how about an alternative ‘wide public’ communication strategy for the EU’s Institutions, particularly the parts which care about the wider public: support the emergence of the EU Online Public Space. One of my last posts on my oldblog that didn’t rehash older posts (the reason why I closed it soon after).

What the European online public space actually needs is a healthy ecosystem of sustainable media businesses, not a series of one-off platforms that come and go like moths in the night, driving media start-ups out of business with the help of public funds.

agreeing and disagreeing with Simon Anholt’s speech on propaganda at EuropCom 2011... as a public institutional website, EUROPA has a public duty to inform. Not to sell, advertise or propagandize – but inform people about What the EU does, How, and... the Why of EU Added Value.

Eurosceptics will see only content negative about the EU, and those within the Brussels Bubble crowd won’t see anything to disturb their worldview, either. You can argue, of course, that this is already the case… the Filter Bubble is going to make communicating about the EU even harder.

Helping people exploit the opportunities which the EU has brought them probably beats trying to entertain them with free karaoke or clogging the Web  with online brochureware... Losing patience, and making no friends

A sort of virtual version of Brussels is emerging, projected into social media but unconnected to much else, where people meet online to continue their conversations from last night’s Place Luxembourg cocktail party