Blogger of the Month November 2013

April 15, 2015

"Planks that mean the world!"

"Planks that mean the world!". That was the title of the first blog entry in our current blog of the month. And this does not mean, as one might expect, the theater stage, but rather the international political stage. The community blog is run by a total of nine students and graduate students in International Relations in Frankfurt aM and Tübingen. And is therefore not only an intellectual challenge, but also a moderately difficult logistical challenge.

It's been a little over a year since the fellow students got together and launched their science blog. Today, they don't really know how exactly that happened. Someone just had the idea and then somehow one thing led to another. And suddenly there it was, the board blog . Named after the famous quote by the sociologist Max Weber: “Politics means a strong, slow drilling of hard boards with passion and a sense of proportion at the same time”. That’s why the blog was first called “On Drilling Hard Boards”. The original name turned out to be quite complicated and actually everyone always said Bretterblog unofficially anyway, so why not officially it too. And so it was quickly decided by consensus to shorten the name.

In general, pretty much all important decisions that affect the blog are made together. There is no boss, but there is an email distribution list. The nine bloggers are now spread across several cities, some are still in Frankfurt and Tübingen, others have moved to Duisburg and Hamburg. And so it happens that in the 17 months that the Bretterblog has existed, there has only been one kind of editorial meeting in which at least the majority of the bloggers were present. Otherwise, everyone has their own area of expertise and generally writes when there is something to write about. Sometimes the group decides whether a topic is really relevant. But there are no hard and fast rules about what is blogged as long as it somehow has something to do with international politics. Can it be processed in the weekly Wednesday post in the Debate section.

Nevertheless, people don't blog about it indiscriminately. After all, the nine also have a certain stylistic and scientific standard for themselves and their blog. That should not only provide information, but above all be a service. For example, there is a network show once a week in which one of the bloggers tries to give a general overview of the political blogosphere. The links from the mainly American and English blogs are then divided into subtopics and commented on. That doesn't just sound like a lot of work, it actually is, and so it's good that three of the nine bloggers share this task.

The latest service offered by the Bretterblog is the Call for Papers section and it becomes clear here at the latest that this is a science blog. Because behind the beautiful name “Call for Papers” there is nothing other than a compilation of official calls for proposals where young scientists can submit their work to conferences. Of course, here again with a focus on international politics.

The hard work and great commitment of the nine is slowly paying off. Each of her posts is also clicked on by non-friends and non-family members, but how often and how much this happens is difficult to say. In principle, they found that the more current and politically relevant an article is, the more it will be read. The absolute record holder is a comment on a broadcast by people at Maischberger about Sinti and Roma in Germany in November 2012. It has been clicked on more than 1,600 times and has even been reblogged twice. The comment definitely deserves this attention, because even though the author was emotionally disturbed by the program, the article is both well written and decently researched.

The former students write on their blog that they do not own the truth, but want to call for debate. They are happy about everyone who reads their blog and would like to help create it. Guest authors (ibkommentar@googlemail.com) are welcome at the Bretterblog , as long as you enjoy working on scientific topics for a broad audience. And you can also quickly get news from the board blog on Twitter and Facebook .

You would also like to become blogger of the month or know someone who should be. Then simply write a short message to rademacher uniglobal de

"Planks that mean the world!" "Planks that mean the world!". That was the title of the first blog entry in our current blog of the month. And this does not mean, as one might expect, the theater stage, but rather the international political stage. The community blog is run by a total of nine students and graduate students in International Relations in Frankfurt am Main

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