opolitics

Politicians must abandon the old broadcast model of communicating if they are to harness the current high public interest in ‘podcasting’ to increase citizen participation in democracy, a leading academic has warned.

Podcasting, which uses the internet to distribute audio and video content to computers and portable devices such as mp3 music players, could become a significant way for people to become politically engaged, according to Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds. But if politicians use it to distribute prepared speeches, the public will turn off, Professor Coleman told E-Government Bulletin.

“Seeing or hearing a politician just deliver a speech isn’t terribly exciting,” he said. “These new technologies only work well if they link the perspective of a politician with those of other people. If it is seen by politicians as another broadcast medium like TV or radio, they will meet with the same indifference,” he said.

Unlike in the US, few high-profile UK politicians have moved to exploit the new technology, although several MPs including Wantage and Didcot Conservative MP Ed Vaizey and Dunbartonshire East Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson are making use of a new political podcasting site ‘Politics on demand’ (http://www.politicsondemand.co.uk) to offer short talks on their work. According to Coleman, Vaizey is also considering offering a more sophisticated service by podcasting his surgeries and public meetings in his constituency.

In the US, some leading politicians such as John Edwards, former running mate to Democrat candidate John Kerry, appear to have grasped how to use the medium to communicate their personality effectively. “John Edwards’s podcast is good. He seems to understand the grassroots, person to person nature of the web pretty well for a national US politician,” leading US-based podcasting guru Brian Russell (http://www.audioactivism.org/) told E-Government Bulletin.

source:E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN - Issue 207, 20 March 2006

a podcat from the New Statesman e-deomcracy evening Politics and New Media - where next?

Subject: Politics and new media: where next - the podcast
From: Dan Jellinek
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 18:48:38 -0000

Hello,

This is an email to everyone who contacted me to say they were interested in the New Statesman e-deomcracy evening but could not attend.

I am delighted to say they have ‘podcasted‘ the event, at:
http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nma/nma2006/nma2006podcasts.php

I hope you enjoy this service.

I expect most of you are on the email list to receive further news, as you received notice of this event, but if you are not on the VoxPolitics list or E-Government Bulletin list let me know if you would like me to add you on.

Best wishes,

Dan Jellinek.

an audio (podcast) update on Open Politics in Israel

Read my open politics implementation.

I am a new media strategist to MK. Dr. Roman Bronfman and the Democratic Choice Party. I started in August 2005 after a friend; Eran Vered introduced me to Dan Goldenblatt, Dr. Bronfman’s political advisor. Vered showed me the proposed site of the party and complained about the backstage user-interface.

The design wasn’t exciting but not bad just a standard party website (here is the new russian site). Goldenblatt invited me to the meeting with the website developing company. During the meeting Eran Vered lost his patience and complained about the unfriendly editing interface, which was really bad. I calmed them down and said that it wasn’t that bad and we can work around it, I suggested a few new features like blogging and content syndication (RSS), Eran added a forum. We decided that I would produce an outline and a plan. I started to work on a web strategy.

The first thing was to implement a blogging system and Wordpress was my choice. The developing company didn’t respond to my requests for database and server access and it took them 3 weeks till they obliged to do so. I spent less than 20 minutes installing the Wordpress weblog software. I started experimenting with wikipedia mediawiki as a social software system. Dan organized a meeting with Dr. Roman Bronfman and I presented my web strategy. Bronfman was excited with the blogging idea and asked if it could be and audio one. Yes, I replied “it is the coolest thing on the net called podcasting“. After inviting friends to experiment with the wiki. I got to the conclusion that it was to complex, and I swapped the mediawiki software with the Drupal based civicspace. Wikipedia is popular in Israel as an encyclopedic source, like anywhere else, but there is only a minority of people whom are tempted to edit it. Drupal/Civicspace uses conventional content posing structure people are less hesitant to publish content. Elections were called for the end of March 2006. If we were not in a tight campaigning schedule I would have continued with the wiki.

I discuss my Open Source Political strategy for MK. Dr. Roman Bronfman and the Democratic Choice Party. Building a community, Adding interactivity and transparency to the way politics are done.

Podcast: MP3 Audio file