Net & Politics 2008 (Top 10)

PoliticsOnline and the World E-Democracy Forum are proud to announce the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. For the seventh year in a row, PoliticsOnline subscribers and visitors from around the world have voted to select the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.

This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, international nominees.

The winners, those top 10 nominees who receive the most votes, were announced at the World E-Gov forum October 16-17, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France).

Barack Obama mybarackobama.com US Presidential nominee, Barack Obama has taken basic organizing theory that he learned in Chicago & combined it with an Internet campaign to create an exquisite organization. The main difference is the semi-autonomous "cell" organizing. This approach has allowed him to: raise hundreds of millions of dollars online through millions of donors. He is the first raised more money and mobilized more people than any campaign in history. His campaign has raised about $350 million to date from 1.7 million donors, mostly in contributions of $200 or less.

MTV's Choose or Lose think.mtv.com With the theme 'Amp Your Voice,' MTV's Choose or Lose has shared the power of its platforms by giving millions of young voters the tools to self-publish and self-organize around the election issues they care about most. The campaign has tapped into the explosion in social networks & new media technologies to not only enable young voters to interact with each other around their election issues, but also provide more direct access to the candidates that impact their lives. The campaign has included the groundbreaking MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue Series, which allowed young people the first-ever, real-time interactive dialogue with presidential candidates; Super Tuesday coverage: the first-ever, live, mobile-to-web broadcasts by Street Team '08, a cadre of youth-focused citizen journalists armed with video-equipped mobile phones; Chooseorlose.com, a multi-media community where young people post their own video, audio, photos, and blog about the issues that matter most to them.

David All davidallgroup.com David All is the founder of Slatecard.com, the Republican counter to the Democrats' ActBlue.com. More than 55 candidates use the platform, and they all raised over $1M in their first election cycle. Because of David's work, Congressman Jack Kingston of GA was named the 2006 Golden Dot Award for Online Politician of the Year by IDPI. He coordinated the Open House Project (increasing government transparency), and had it endorsed by John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi in an op-ed in The Hill. In 2007, he started TechRepublican.com, a group blog focusing like a laser on the intersection of Republican politics and technology. C & E named him among their '08 class of Rising Stars.

eGovernment Resource Centre egov.vic.gov.au The eGovernment Resource Centre has been aggregating the world's eGovernment strategies, eDemocracy initiatives, ICT policies, website standards, government information and communications technology (ICT) and government website best practices and standards for more than ten years. Published by the Victorian Government in Australia, it contains summaries of more than 11,000 external resources and 1450 articles. It is the foremost repository for everything eGovernment in the world. The site attracts more than 20,000 visitors each month and provides a weekly newsletter and RSS news feeds to its readership. Members are able to bookmark their favorite resources, rate and review content.

Oscar Swartz swartz.typepad.com Oscar Swartz, Swedish IT entrepreneur, founder of pioneer Internet provider Bahnhof, blogger and libertarian debater, is a well known critic of the "surveillance society", in Sweden. This surveillance society is often called "The Bodstram Society" and "The Ask Society", after the former and present Swedish Ministers of Justice, socialist and conservative respectively, who have championed far-reaching legislation concerning digital surveillance. Together with a number of other bloggers, he managed to form the "blog quake": in June 2008, the resistance against the Lex Orwell, due to pass in parliament quietly during the Euro Soccer Cup and Swedish Midsummer celebrations, managed to spill over into traditional mass media just days before. The government was almost defeated with MPs breaking party lines. In the weeks following the decision, the MPs that passed the law received 6.6 million e-mails from angry citizens, and thousands marched in demonstrations all over the country.

Pambazuka News pambazuka.org Pambazuka News, with a readership of 500,000, is produced by a pan-African community of over 1000 citizens - academics, social activists, women's organizations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful and thoughtful analyses that make it the most innovative and influential sites for social justice in Africa. Pambazuka publishes podcasts, videos and books; supports African women and marginalized groups to develop blogs, radio programs, podcasts and mobile phone technologies to enable them to give voice to their experiences; and enables CSO's to monitor the African Union. Its growth reflects a commitment to fostering a community of African citizens who hold their governments to account. Be it the recent Kenya electoral crisis, the xenophobic killings in South Africa, the electoral violence in Zimbabwe, or the growing influence of China in Africa, Pambazuka has become the source of authentic voices of Africa's social analysts and activists.

David Kralik, American Solutions <Email> americansolutions.com David Kralik, Director of Internet Strategy for American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), is changing the world of Internet and Politics, by realizing that the web is not just another tool but an entirely different culture, a new way of viewing the world. Through his work with Newt Gingrich, Kralik has bridged the gap between the network-based 21st Century world of the Valley and the hierarchical-centric world of Washington, DC, and is at the center of a critical effort to move beyond gridlock to solutions. One of the solutions that highlight how David harnesses new tools and strategies of the Internet is the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" petition effort that recently passed 1M signatures. This petition shows the power of the Internet to bring together many voices into a singular chorus so as to effect real change. This same definition could be applied to democracy itself.

HuffPost's OffTheBus huffingtonpost.com/off-the-bus/ HuffPost's OffTheBus (OTB) is a citizen-powered and –produced presidential campaign news site sponsored by the Huffington Post and NewAssignment.Net. Its citizen journalists have broken some of the biggest stories of the presidential campaign season in the United States, and set new precedents for reporting in the digital age. New York Magazine credited OTB with creating the genre of citizen journalism. By combining the best traditions of legacy journalism with the democratic technology of the Web, by applying professional standards and techniques to citizen-based reporting, OTB has developed and refined a collaborative methodology for producing unique news stories beyond the scope of a traditional reporter or news organization. Since it launched in mid-summer of 2007, OffTheBus has quickly grown to more than 9,000 contributors.

The Social Liberal Party of Denmark radikale.net The Social Liberal Party of Denmark made the first open political community in Denmark. Launched on the 26th of September 2007, it became the first Danish attempt to take the knowledge from the American campaigns and use it to 1) revitalize the party structure, making it easy to participate for everyone 2) opening up the party debates to anyone interested in the subject (closed party member-debates are otherwise the rule in Denmark) 3) giving everyone with an interest in the party the resources needed to contribute in the election campaign.

Farmsubsidy.org farmsubsidy.org Brussels based freelance journalist Brigitte Alfter and her network of investigative journalists throughout Europe are about to change European farm policies with their web-initiative Farmsubsidy.org. Using the freedom of information law, they have forced European governments to release detailed data on who gets what from Europe's Common Agricultural Policy. All 27 EU countries will disclose data revealing details of some 100bn given in subsidies by the Euro-taxpayer every year to farmers, food companies, industrial regeneration schemes and the fishing industry.