Overview: Content Strategy

"Hitting “publish” on this, my first blog post on Knowledge4Policy (K4P), is a special moment for me. I’ve helped create a few online communities for the European Commission (I launched my first in February 2002, so I just missed that particular anniversary), but K4P may be the most important."

After pointing out that mainstream - ie centralised - social platforms cannot moderate effectively due to scale, then introduces fediverse/activitypub-based platforms. Will they face same moderation problems as the mainstream if/when they grow?Takes Gab's unsuccessful move into fediverse as an example: "Almost immediately, Gab was met by…

With more than a dozen congressional candidates appearing on ballots in November, Qanon is mainstream. While it looks like a lot of other conspiracy theories, this research provides a fascinating look at how the conspiracy's "Bakers" co-create their knowledgescape."QAnon doesn’t simply offer readers insider insight into current…

This is a piece for people who have been part of the Q Anon movement... beginning to get tired ... starting to get skeptical... Q mostly stopped making specific predictions after a series of embarrassing failures... demanding that we all Trust the Plan and stop asking why Q is always wrong... There’s a reason you got scammed... why did you keep be…

Covid-19 case numbers are now spiking in many counties across West Texas ... [but] resolve of ... skeptics appears to be stiffening... the denial of facts is often rooted in identity and belonging, not in ignorance ...people who deny science ... trying to uphold membership in ... a political or religious affiliation or some other group ... a commu…

my last column in this space is not about “cancel culture.” Well, almost... The quality of my work does not appear to be the problem... A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me ... orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in …

why Wikipedia has been a more successful news source than Wikinews... Wikipedia’s formulaic style and continuous format are more conducive to collaborative writing projects ... writing a news story with a lead, a coherent narrative, and a deadline is very different than writing an encyclopedia article...tension between the Wikipedia community... …

Some sites are a victim of their own initial success. A decade after launching, an EC community platform was struggling to remain relevant. Over the intervening years it had offered a flexible, powerful publishing solution to many different parts of the EC...

Facebook needs to engage its users in more substantive acts of participation. ... mistakenly assumes that locally respected fact-checking NGOs can supply the trust Facebook itself is lacking. But NGOs lack standing... In a liberal democracy, NGOs can legitimately elevate arguments and offer counterarguments to government positions... we assume arg…

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 …

Take the Pro-Truth Pledge to encourage politicians – and everyone else – to commit to truth-oriented behaviors and protect facts and civility. ... Pledge-takers are held accountable through crowd-sourcing the truth.. volunteers who evaluate whether public figures violate the pledge by sharing misinformation.... this peer-reviewed article... Publ…

reddit community called Change My View ... a ready-made natural experiment ... feed it into programs ... to understand the back-and-forth between human beings ... discovered two things: what kind of arguments are most likely to change people’s minds, and what kinds of minds are most likely to be changed. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ : po…

Latest on the K4P Medium Publication

If Facebook is to thrive ... it’ll need to evolve. Here’s where we think it’s heading… developers and platforms ... will be unable to post content on behalf of personal Facebook profiles... can only post to business profiles and pages on both Facebook and Instagram... Facebook might be hoping that more unique content shared by users, reaching mor…

Managing a Medium Publication to share our the journey as we build Knowledge4Policy: "share our experiences … as transparently as possible, and invite ideas and perspectives from experts in evidence-based policymaking around the world"

the solution to both crises facing journalism may come from the same technological root: blockchain... An ecosystem of micropayments... as the holy grail for online journalism... Blockchain technology can create both chains of authenticity and a level of security... Sludge is one of the “first fleet” of around 20 newsrooms ... on a new blockchai…

Wales wants to bring the power of the Wiki community and the wisdom of crowds to bear on the media business by creating a hybrid model... local community members can help direct the work of WikiTribune journalists when such events occur, suggesting avenues to explore and co-creating a more permanent news resource that will serve a longer-term comm…

I have an obvious incentive to get claps: pretty decent money. ... I can write more polarized headlines... on polarizing topics. I can piggy back on the hot news of the day... write things I don’t actually believe using incendiary language ... Medium has safeguards ... a team of curators ... a policy against abuse that it actually enforces... a t…

if everyone has the same information, the crowd is no smarter than a single individual... a diverse collection of opinions, especially including minority views, is crucial for creating a smart group... we have an innate desire to imitate our peers... it may also be because of a rational, profit-seeking motivation... The more complex the situation…

Community engagement is about shifting that perspective. It’s about continuously listening, interacting and serving a community. How did the work contribute to the community reaching its goals? Far too often, journalists are obsessed with telling the story. And the story is good. But the story. isn’t. enough. design thinking ... can help us achi…

Three articles unpacking the relationship between community, communications, content and EU communications.

author of The Content Trap and professor at Harvard Business School, talks about the strategic challenges facing digital businesses, and explains how he and his colleagues wrestled with them when designing HBX, the school’s online learning platform... success for the best companies does not come from making the best content, it comes from recogniz…

the most recommended stories on Medium have either to do with startups, life or productivity. Sometimes, all three topics are squeezed in a single story — How to be super productive in your startup and change your life… If we can undo the follower bias, I think everybody becomes a writer and nobody really becomes a celebrity.

journalists can engage their audiences as contributors, advisors, advocates, collaborators and partners. This study describes in detail how newsrooms and independent journalists can grow their readership, boost their relevance and find new sources of revenue by listening to and learning from their audiences.... This is about how journalists can ge…

I've been invited to prepare a "Technology Buyer Challenge" on Hashtag Platform for the Language Technology Industry Summit this May. (Update, 31/3/16: this project was covered, among many other things, in an interview with professional EU interpreter Alexander Drechsel in his podcast Demos ex machina? Multilingual communication wit…

My sadly underwhelmed response to @sidewireinc’s gr8 “Today’s Internet is Optimized for Noise”

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

focusing less on how audiences interact with content on the screen but more about how, because of stories, we engage with each other as a community. Less transaction, more relation; less on audience, more on community... in 2003 I launched the initial version of Interactive Narratives ... Finding inspiring multimedia work was one benefit. But f…

I’ve been experimenting with online communities since 2002, and thought I’d seen every useful idea already implemented. Knowledge Hub (“K-Hub”) has a lot of features common to Community of Practice platforms, and have an interesting take on Blogs, which I’ve not seen anywhere else. And it’s almost excellent...

I recently had a great live Hangout with Ezri Carlebach and Charlelie Jourdan to discuss visual communications, taking risks and creating energy in conferences.