Podcasts Make it Big

Podcasting took 2005 by storm, going from zero to mainstream at a dizzying pace and giving blogs a run for their money as the next big thing in politics and the Internet. Not only was “podcast” named the Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary of English, ipod, the preferred method of podcast delivery, was also the Most Searched Term on Froogle.

There are now thousands of podcasts online on topics ranging from learning French to Godcasts and political podcasts. Politicians have eagerly embraced podcasts as a way to communicate directly with their audience, as well as a way to reach the younger generation of voters. According to Joe Trippi, "I'm pretty sure whether it's 2006 or 2008, we're going to be hearing as much about podcasting and video blogging as we heard about blogs helping Dean in 2003."

Here’s a look at the U.S. podcasting highlights of 2005:

-- Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) became the first U.S. senator to offer a podcast downloadable from his Senate Website

-- A day later, the White House posted all of President Bush's radio addresses since January as podcasts

-- The Republican National Committee offers two podcasts, "BookCast" and "Wireside Chat"

--The Democratic National Committee unveiled a podcast in December; fittingly the first podcast featured an interview with DNC Chairman Howard Dean

And some podcasting innovations around the world:

-- Tony Blair became the first world leader to podcast, just prior to the UK elections.

--The Singapore Democratic Party launched the first political podcast in Singapore, as a way for the party to bypass censorship in Singapore’s state-controlled media

-- Podcasters in New Zealand pioneered election podcasts for the country's general elections in September, featuring the first podcasts interviewing political leaders

“You know, the big difference between now and 20, 30 years ago is -- in terms of public problems -- is that before you really had to try to convince a politician in power to do something. Today, with the growth of the Internet and nongovernmental organizations, people have unprecedented power."
--Bill Clinton

"This is definitely going down as the biggest political call to action - I think it would be fair to say we're getting texts messages from people from Albania to Zimbabwe - This shows how you can make an imprint with your thumb which becomes your voice which becomes a call to end world poverty."
-- Ralph Simon, coordinator of the Live 8 text messaging campaign

"Blogging is the new talk radio."
--Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

PoliticsOnline In House Favorite - Global Voices Online

This site is living proof that the Internet can make the world a much smaller place. The Global Voices Online ueber-blog has achieved a real global breakthrough by tracking “bridge bloggers” – people who write about their country or region to a global audience - from around the globe to give all readers diverse, authentic, original commentary, news, information, and insight from every wired corner of the world. By organizing, tracking, broadcasting and linking hundreds of bloggers by nation and topic, Global Voices opens the door to voices that may otherwise have gone unheard.

And it's working: the Global Voices website has grown at a phenomenal rate, and is now getting 300,000 visitors a month.

Keep an eye on the co-founders of Global Voices Online, Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon - these two are sure to continue to do great things in the world of citizen media.

MVP- BBC UK Election 2005 Coverage Site

The BBC outdid themselves (again) with their site dedicated to in-depth, online Coverage of the 2005 UK Election. The site is jam-packed with interactive tools and features such as: election news in pictures or video, seat finder, fun election quiz, and now that the election is over, detailed elections results.

Here are a few of our favorite features:

--the Election Monitor, a campaign blog, that brought first- hand reports from correspondents, newspapers, the web, and reader e-mails
--Election alerts or instant updates that delivered up to the minute election news directly to subscribers' inboxes or mobiles
-- the “Swingometer” allowed users to become the analysts, and predict what would happen when the vote shifted form one party to another
-- the seat calculator took vote share percentages for the main parties, and others, and turned them into a predicted election result

Full Disclosure: The BBC is a long-term client of PoliticsOnline, but we truly think they are doing incredible things. Keep watching, and see for yourself.

Hurricane Katrina Relief Essentials: Food, Shelter and Internet Access

Following the disaster left behind by Hurricane Katrina, people turned to technology for help in vast numbers and in innovative ways.

Traffic to news sites soared in the days following Hurricane Katrina, yet the most poignant, firsthand news came from the Internet and citizen accounts in the form of blogs, online photo galleries and discussion forums. One of the most popular first hand news sources was the blog at NOLA.us, started by a member of the web hosting company Directnic in New Orleans that managed to stay up and running throughout the crisis. This may be a defining moment for the rise of citizen journalism in the U.S.
Online Coverage of Hurricane Katrina

As the enormity of Hurricane Katrina's human and economic cost was realized, there was an outpouring of online donations, especially to Web sites that provide instantaneous donation processing allowing charities to respond “at the speed of life." Kintera estimates that nearly $350 million has been collected online to benefit Katrina survivors.

But, donators beware. Almost as fast as nonprofits rallied to help Katrina victims, dozens of scams hit the web to cash in on public sympathy. Since Katrina first hit, U.S. has been arresting those involved in such scams

With the disaster hitting close to home, many people wanted to do more than donate money, and they reached out online with job, lodging, and transportation offers - turning the web into a town hall overnight.

More than anything, however, the Net provided a vast electronic bulletin board for those looking for lost loved ones, posting phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and making urgent pleas. In an echo of Sept. 11, 2001, each posting was a snapshot of lives torn apart.
Hurricane Katrina Missing Persons Lists

MyWar.com – Everyone Tells Their Story

The Iraq conflict is the first Internet war, complete with technology for everyone to share their story – soldiers, terrorists, politicians, victims and their relatives.

Soldiers in Iraq give the inside scoop on the war offering a vivid, unfiltered perspective in their blogs (aka: milbloggers). The entries give readers an up close and personal account, but they also draw scrutiny and regulation from commanders concerned they could compromise security. Check out two of these popular soldier blogs: SgtLizzie and 67cshdocs

Soldiers generated more than written content - some of the most telling photos and videos of the war come from soldiers armed with phones and cameras. One web site hoping to cash in on this, offered free access to pornographic content in exchange for photos of nude female soldiers in Iraq and graphic photos of dead Iraqis.

Al-Qaeda and the insurgents have increasingly turned to cyberspace to spread their message with more sophistication than ever before, offering online content from an Internet magazine to job postings and an online news service which releases tactical details of operations multiple times a day. See Washington Post’s special report on e-Qaeda, al-Qaeda and the Internet

Last but not least, citizens have turned to the Internet to show their support for the troops and mourn those lost. At www.thanksforyourservice.org Americans can write their message of thanks on a virtual wall of thanks. Casualties can be commemorated in online multimedia tributes such as Legacy.com and The Guardian newspaper in England has a site to commemorate lost Iraqi civilians. These sites offer a very personal glimpse at those lost.
Read " The First Online War Honors Fallen Troops With Web Tributes"

Tech Companies Sell Out Freedom for a Piece of the Chinese Market

Tech companies hoping to gain access to one of the world’s fastest growing international markets faced a moral test as to whether they would cooperate with Chinese authorities’ censorship of online content.

They failed the test.

Yahoo has been criticized for providing information that helped Chinese authorities link journalist Shi Tao with emails that allegedly divulged “state secrets,” ultimately leading Mr. Tao to be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Read "Chinese Internet vs. Free Speech"

Microsoft agreed to censor the Chinese version of its MSN Spaces blog tool. Entries mentioning "freedom," "democracy," "demonstration," "Dalai Lama," "falun gong," or "Taiwanese independence" are censored.

Google agreed to exclude any "subversive" website from the Chinese version of its news search engine and omits banned publications, such as BBC and Voice of America, from its Chinese news service.

While the companies defend themselves in saying that they must work within the laws of each country they operate in, the companies have been censured by a senior European commissioner and are now under the watchful eye of a Reporters without Borders initiative and many others.
Read "Hi-Tech Firms Censured over China"

The Whole World is Watching!

MIT Team Creating $100 Laptops

By this time next year, school children around the world may have in their hands a small lime green laptop developed by MIT researchers on the initiative of Nicholas Negroponte and his non-profit One Laptop Per Child.

Sit back and watch - it will change the world

In the span of one year, the vision of a $100 laptop to help the world’s children went from dream to reality. The prototype of laptop was revealed at the UN Summit in Tunisia, and Taiwan’s Qantas has agreed to begin manufacturing the laptops by the end of 2006.

This is an ambitious plan to bridge the divide, by making it affordable for developing countries to purchase notebooks in bulk, and give one to each child to use as a learning tool at school and tote home at night.

The initiative will not only revolutionize learning for children in developing countries, but is also overhauling notebook design. The laptop’s rubber-encased, versatile, environment-proof design and hand- cranked power option is constructed for rough- and- tumble, on-the-go kids. View Concept Images

While students in developing countries will be the first to receive these green machines, a commercial version may become available at a slightly higher price tag of $200, and Massachusetts’s governor would like half a million notebooks for the kids in his state.

And it all starts this year. For more, read PoliticsOnline's $100 Laptop Special Report

Vlogging - If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Video Says it All

Now anyone can turn their blog into a vlog (that’s a video weblog) or subscribe and have the latest installments of their favorite vlog automatically delivered to their computer or mobile device. The number of vlogs has mushroomed thanks to improved streaming video technology, faster Internet speeds and new Web sites that will host video free of charge.

The new medium, which is attracting thousands of aspiring video producers and commentators, is part of a broader trend of do-it-yourself, user generated content (UGC) that's sweeping the television landscape.

Vlogging allows anyone with a computer the chance to become a newscaster, either satirically or otherwise. One of the most popular, Rocketboom is a three minute daily vblog based in New York City, covering news, information and uncovering buried Internet treasure.

While vlogs are not yet mainstream, it’s a great idea and one sure to catch on sooner rather than later.

40 Million Sign Online Petition Against Japan

A grass-roots Chinese campaign to block Japan’s bid to join an expanded United Nations Security Council, until the government issues a formal apology, garnered lots of international attention.

The petition effort, conducted through popular Chinese web sites and media outlets, collected more than 40 million signatures. The media and the petition enjoyed unusual support from the Chinese government notorious for cracking down on most forms of online political expression. While some have questioned how the petition was being promoted, anytime 40 million Internet users do anything it’s huge, and can’t be ignored.
Read "If 22 Million Chinese Prevail at UN, Japan Won't"

$350 Million in Hurricane Katrina Relief Pours in Online

The momentum of online relief following the Tsunami at the end of 2004 continued to help disasters throughout 2005.

Following Katrina, charities reported record-breaking online donations. In the first eight days, the American Red Cross gathered $209 million in online donations alone.

Amazon.com raised $14 million and Yahoo! raised $5.8 million in donations to go to benefit the American Red Cross with the total amount of online donations estimated at more than $350 million according to Kintera, Inc.

13 million Americans made donations to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts online.

Americans also charged to the Internet to help. 7 million set up their own hurricane relief efforts using the Internet and 6 million Americans posted hurricane- related comments, links, or pictures.

Additionally, 13 million Americans used the Internet or email to check on the safety of someone who might have been affected by the hurricanes.
Read "Pew Internet and American Life Project Internet Use After Hurricane Katrina Report"

Just 3 months after Katrina, an Earthquake shook Pakistan, yet the online response was much slower. In the 2 1/2 weeks after the Earthquake hit, the Islamic Relief online donations were expected to top $1 million, compared with $1.5 million more, 2 1/2 weeks after the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in December 2004.
Read "Earthquake Relief Uneven"

Youth Voters: Jib Jab 10X

As "the millennials"--a generation of children who grew up at the dawn of the millennium -- come of voting age, we can expect them to change the face of politics and social activism. These young people have been raised on a steady diet of digital technologies in an always-on world that has fundamentally shaped their notions of literacy, intelligence, politics, and society.

Think Jib Jab times ten, or twenty, in ways we’re just too old to imagine. Or think of video games for a cause – GamePolitics.com launched this year to cover the intersection of video games and politics. Stay tuned.

The numbers below, from a study by the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School, quantify what is happening with the first of the millenials to reach political activist age in the United States and they also reflect what is happening around the globe:

48 % of today’s college students consider themselves politically active, but in ways that hardly resemble the sit-ins or protests of their parents’ generation, here’s how they’re getting involved:

--36% have signed an online petition
--30% have written an email advocating a position
--18% have contributed to a political blog
www.iop.harvard.edu

Here's what we think will happen in 2006

1. A Citizen Journalist "Uprising" Facilitated by the MSM – Citizen journalism will take it to the next level with the help of a mainstream media company, and will create a political firestorm from users sometime in 2006. Imagine a cross between the outpouring of citizen content following the London bombings and Rathergate, the blogswarm that unveiled Dan Rather had reported forged information about George Bush’s service record. Hint: watch the BBC.

2. A Global Blogging Breakthrough - on the Local Level Blogs are springing up left and right, and in a variety of different forms. There are 100,000 bloggers in Iran, 6 million Chinese bloggers, 1.5 million Polish bloggers, etc. and many are focused on local issues and politics. Expect millions more bloggers around the world to join in with a huge resulting impact on the local level. BlogHerald Blogger Estimates by Country

3. A Revolution in the Palm of Your Hand - Somewhere, citizens will use mobile phones to change the political order in their country. And by the way, it won’t be in the US or Europe – keep your eyes on central Asia or the Middle East. Look for a country where high cell phone use collides with low levels of democracy and openness.

4. The Rise of the Second Superpower Against a Consumer Brand – In 2006, ‘the second superpower’ – citizens from around the world simultaneously acting in concert with a common objective using the new online tools and media – will rise again, but this time in an activism campaign against a major global corporation. (Setting aside the politics, for more on the ‘second superpower’ concept, see Jim Moore's analysis )

Perhaps it will be against one of the tech companies like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo in reaction to their China policies (See the Most Underreported Story of the Year above). The key will be someone figuring out how to focus on a specific target or action.

editor@politicsonline.com