In terms of communities of practice, they can be really useful for sharing the latest developments and personal viewpoints on practice. For communities of interest, they are vital for sharing ideas - and some blogs become hubs for other blogs. Political communities of interest are more and more relying on series of individual blogs to influence opinion and policy - and often create additional sites to aggregate or bring together the views of several bloggers. Here's a US right-wing one: Pajamas Media and a US left-wing one: Leftyblogs - (word to the wise - my links to other blogs or websites are NEVER endorsements of any views unless I explicitly say so). Leftyblogs is interesting because it's organised by state - and has a requirement that bloggers write primarily about state or local politics.
Geographic blogging communities:
There are a couple of sites which are hubs for British blogging - namely Blogging Brits and Brit Blog and one for London based around the London transport map. In the US, there are more - and many rely on blog aggregators - that is, a rolling, automatically updating showing the latest blog posts from members of the community. The Bay Area is Talking is one such site - hosted by a local television station and run by a professional blogger who highlights posts of interest to those who live in the Bay Area (the greater metropolitan San Francisco-Oakland area in California).
And in local government:
Closer to home...Chester City Council runs an aggregator, too. The website shows the recent blog entries of councillors. This is a great way of showing local citizens who's been updating recently and what councillors are saying. A small but growing number of UK councillors have their own blogs. Some are better at updating than others. I've linked to a number of councillor blogs on this site (you can see them when you're on the main page) - and I'll continue to add more as I come across them. While I can't say that I endorse individual views of councillors, I certainly support the idea of communicating to constituents directly and personally via the web wholeheartedly.
As part of the ODPM sponsored local e-democracy project, councillors are encouraged to blog and councils are encouraged to try a variety of different e-consultation, e-engagement projects.
What are they saying?
Here's a sample of what some councillors* are saying:
- Stuart Bruce, a Labour Councillor in Leeds, is concefrned about his ward area getting a "second-class clean up service".
- Councillor Andrew Brown, Labour, London Borough of Lewisham - has several recent posts on local licensing issues.
- Lib Dem councillors in Cardiff, Nigel Howells and John Dixon share a blog (a great way to ensure regular posting) and Cllr Howells shares the news of a grant for rowing equipment for local schools from a charitable trust set up by Sir Steve Redgrave
* Why no Tory blogs? Update more regularly and I shall link you! If I've missed some - let me know, leave a comment.
4 comments:
Like the look of the new blog, but it would be nice to know who you are - although I've actually already worked it out I'm sure that many visitors aren't as familiar with the IDeA website as I am!
Hi, thanks for the link. There are of course quite a few of us councillors blogging now, and you'll be able to get a list of those of us from the Labour Party through the Bloggers 4 Labour site. There may be similar sites for other parties but I'm afraid I don't tend to follow them.
Thanks for the tip Andrew!!
Hi Ingrid, There are a couple of pieces of content on the IDeA Knowledge website that might be of interest:
Councillor Mary Reid talks about her blog and Councillors Nic Best and Bob Piper talk about the challenges of running a council sponsored website alongside their own blogs.
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