March 30, 2009
G20 Summit Covered By 50 Bloggers
G20Voice is sending 50 bloggers to cover the G20 Summit on Thursday, where leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies will meet in London.
G20Voice.org says, "50 of the world’s most interesting and influential bloggers will be your eyes and ears at the G20 Summit in London, April 2. They come from 22 different countries, and between them represent a global audience of over 14 million readers and online participants. They are journalists who use blogging as their medium to disseminate their views. Some are ‘professional bloggers’, others are ordinary citizens who have become well known through their blogs."
Protesters are gathering despite the promise of "global solutions" and have created grassroots movements targeted at building the number of protesters at events and organizing meetings online. One example of the success of online organizing in anticipation of the G20 Summit was the Put People First Rally in London on March 28th. Over 35,000 people held a peaceful march and rally through the streets of London to send a message to the leaders attending the summit. PutPeopleFirst.org is utilizing new media in the form of an online petition, a facebook group, a photostream, and a hashtag on twitter, #G20rally.
(Video) Protestors gather in London ahead of G20 summit
Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
March 26, 2009
Obama Seeks Citizen Engagement Through Online Town Hall
Whitehouse.gov hosted an online townhall where Pres. Obama answered questions regarding the economy.
During a press conference in the White House's East Room on Tuesday, President Obama invited everyone to use a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov called " Open for Questions" to ask a question about the economy.
Run by Google Moderator, this online question submission is very similar to the post-election transition team's "Your Seat at the Table" forum in that it allows users to submit questions and vote other questions up or down.
The President's Twitter account made its first post since the inauguration, directing followers to the White House online forum to submit votes. Voting for this round closed this morning at 9:30am.
Obama announced that this online townhall is an "experiment" and although the event will be open to the press, the president will not be taking any questions from reporters. Today (Thursday) at 11:30 AM Eastern, moderated by Jared Bernstein, chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, Pres. Obama began the virtual citizen engagement "experiment" and started answering questions live on WhiteHouse.gov.
Posted by Buzz Webster at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
March 23, 2009
U.S. State Department's High Tech Means of International Dialogue
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton utilizes technology to further the U.S. Government's public diplomacy efforts abroad.
Posted by Buzz Webster at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
March 17, 2009
Obama Taps Into Support, Launches New Online Tool
Obama launched a grassroots campaign and new online tool to build support for his $3.55 trillion dollar budget proposal.
The grass-roots campaign is being run by the Democratic National Committe and is using the 13 million-strong email list accumulated during Obama's presidential campaign to flood members of Congress with phone calls asking for their support for the $3.55 trillion budget proposal.
David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager and now advisor to Organizing for America (OFA), the group in charge of the 13 million email list, sent out a call-to-action email to the mailing list, saying that they will be asking supporters to perform similar tasks that were asked during the campaign: to organize neighborhood canvassing operations this weekend and to participate in organized efforts, using the same voter lists that were used during the presidential campaign, to go door-to-door seeking support for hte Obama agenda.
While the President's office is using the same old online campaign tools to engage supporters and build a movement of support for his budget agenda, the DNC and OFA has launched an online tool that allows constituents to enter their address to locate their congressional representatives' contact information so they can call the lawmakers' offices to voice approval of the proposal. The new online tool launched today marks the first time the OFA e-mail database has been used to urge direct contact with Congress in support of legislation.
Obama introduced Organizing for America via YouTube in January, saying that the group "will build on the movement you started during the campaign. That's why I am asking people like you who fought for change during the campaign to continue fighting for change in your communities."
The typical tidal wave of support familiar with President Obama's grass-roots efforts of the past has not been seen yet. ( See techPresident's TubeMogel Chart: Testing Support for Obama)
Obama Enlists Campaign Army In Budget Fight
Obama Using Campaign Tools to Promote Agenda
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March 11, 2009
Web Is An Opportunity, Not Threat, To Countering Terrorism
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According to a recent study, new technologies must be viewed as an opportunity, not threat, to counter online radicalisation.
The London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence released a study that found governments' effort to hinder online extremists by making it more technically difficult to access terrorist propaganda through censorship is not as effective as open dialogue.
According the the authors of the report, censorship of online extremist activity alone is, "crude, expensive and counterproductive" and any attempt to remove all online extremist content "would generate social and political costs that would far outweigh the benefits that might be gained from having certain materials removed, especially in the context of a liberal democracy."
The report showed that the Internet is ineffective at drawing in new recruits to terrorist networks and said, "Much of the jihadist Web presence was about 'preaching to the choir...While the Internet provides a convenient platform for activists to renew their commitment and reach out to like-minded individuals elsewhere, it is largely ineffective when it comes to drawing in new recruits."
The solution was presented in the form of online communities that facilitate critical thinking and self-assess the information that is on the Internet. Governments must promote open dialogue and present online radicalisaction and recruitment as "unacceptable and less desirable."
(CNet) Internet Not to Blame for Terrorism
(WSJ) The Web’s Role in Terrorism May Be Overstated
Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
March 09, 2009
In India, Taking A Page Out of Obama's Playbook
India's two main political parties are targeting the tens of millions of first-time voters through the internet.
With the parliamentary elections taking place in April and May and with enough votes to swing the election, India's young people are being targeted through the Net. 51 percent of India's 1.15 billion people who are younger than 25 and yet the past three Indian prime ministers all have been older than 70.
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The ruling Indian National Congress party has refreshed the face of their political party in an effort to relate to the large youth population. Rahul Gandhi, 38 years old, is the new and fresh face that can be found displayed on billboards, although the candidate for prime minister will most likely be the 76 year old incumbent Manmohan Singh.
The 81 year old Lal Krishna Advani, prime minister candidate of the major opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, can add to his six decades long political career the honor of having India's first political blog, but it may not be enough to win over India's youth. Advani updates his blog about once every 10 days, calling in from his iPhone and dictating his posts.
Advani has used his blog and website as a pulpit rather than a two-way communication medium. He created the ‘Bloggers for Advani’ programme in which he asked bloggers to place a badge on their website to convey support for his political platform. Although impressed with the use of new media tools, many of India's young and tech-savvy voters are skeptical of the message that Advani is sending, which they view as a stale and outdated political agenda.
The Chicago Tribune reports that hundreds of responses have been written to Advani's entries, but so far he has not replied to anyone. "Sad to see not a single reply back from you Advani," Abhinav Singh wrote. "Nice that you adopted obama's methodology, but as far as I know, obama's net campaign was a 2 way interaction."
The BJP recently created a Information Technology cell headed by Prodyut Bora. According to livemint.com, "Obama’s presence online is a clear inspiration for Advani’s. As early as July 2007, when the IT cell was constituted, Bora wrote an 8,000-word article, for internal circulation within the BJP, on the use of IT by political parties in the US, the UK and Australia. “It was what in management is called a benchmarking exercise,” he says."
Youth movement sweeps India politics
Thank you, Mr Advani, but I won’t log in
The man behind Advani’s online rallies
BJP takes SMS route to reach out to grass roots
Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
March 03, 2009
Twitter Takes Over Washington
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Twitter is all the rage in Washington as Members of the Senate and House of Representatives, and in some cases their aides, are twittering away days on the Hill.
Representative John Culberson, a Republican from Texas, has created the most volume on Twitter, posting over 2,000 messages, four times more than any other official on the micro-blogging site. Culberson told AFP, "To my knowledge I'm the first member of Congress to adopt it and use it."
Senator John McCain of Arizona touts the most Twitter followers with more than 106,000 people tracking his micro-messages, although many of the Tweets coming from the self-professed computer illiterate Senator sound more like the brief thoughts of a Generation X aide. One of Sen. McCain's recent Twitter posts said, "#4. $143,000 for Nevada Humanities to develop and expand an online encyclopedia - Anyone heard of Wikipedia?" After an entire election cycle of being hounded on his lack of tech-savviness, you have to wonder if Senator McCain has heard of Wikipedia. Either way, Senator McCain, or his staff, is using Twitter effectively to garner attention on his stance against earmarks (those pet projects inserted by lawmakers into bills) by listing the top ten worst earmarks in the recent stimulus package on his Twitter page.
Can't keep track of all of the tweeting Representatives and Senators? Tweetcongress.org, keeps track and ranks representatives and senators in terms of their number of followers and messages sent.
Comedy Central's Jon Stewart reports on the Twitter Frenzy sweeping Washington.
Twitter Takes Washington By Storm
Posted by Buzz Webster at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
