opolitics

18 Doughty Street is a new web based internet TV channel. They won’t hide its rightwing agenda. I wonder if it will be Fox News for the UK. Discussing politics is always good for democracy in an age where civil liberties are compromised for the Anti Terror crusade. I am looking forward for the 10th of October to watch the channel. I tend to the left and currently live overseas. Good luck to the 18 Doughty Street team.

David Cameron, Conservative party leader, has launched his own vlog (video weblog) to try to get his message across to young people. Blogging is the latest PR and marketing weapon for political parties, trying to look fresh. David Cameron shows his domestic charm in the kitchen, dining room, the car and in the office. The question is will Web 2.0 help Cameron win the next elections.

A must read:

Geek activism has not taken off yet, but it should. With the gamers recognizing the need for a louder voice, EFF gaining momentum and Linux taking on the mainstream on the one hand and recent severe losses in privacy, freedom of speech and intellectual property rights on the other, now seems to be the best time to rally around the cause.

Israel. The war against the Hezbollah in Lebanon and bloodshed are having their toll on the population. The majority of the Israeli general public support the war and numbers haven’t declined since it started, 3 weeks ago.

The other day Gili challenged me and asked me if I could help her with an online petition. I said that I don’t write code, but I could help her and find a solution.

Orit and Gili have been petitioning the government for a ceasefire and needed way to collect signatures in an easy way.

The WordPress Blogging software is very easy to skin. You can create and design your own theme very easily if you have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS (PHP is also usefull).

How to create a petitioning software with Wordpress?

1. I used the default WordPress theme Kubrick and changed the commenting system and internal instruction to a form for adding names, emails and addresses. I shortened the comment field and labeled it as the place for entering the address.
2. I added a Page template that creates a list of all the signatures collected.

Basically this is it. The first version was in Hebrew I started working on English one adding a printer friendly version and thinking of other features.

Shortly, I will post the Wordpress Petition theme \ code on the internet and share with others.

Here is the English test site and the Hebrew working version of the petition, calling the Israeli government for a cease-fire and the opening of negotiations with Lebanon.

An unparliament is a conference where the content of the meeting is driven and created by the public rather than by elected politicians. The unparliament is the reality gathering where Open Politics are debated, a meeting place for the community.

The concept based on Unconference, an idea by Lenn Pryor when discussing BloggerCon but popularized by Dave Winer in his blog.

please add ideas to this short definition.

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

Social Software and Cyber Networks: Ties That Bind or Weak Associations within the Political Organization?

Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’05) - Track 5 p. 117b

David T. Green, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL
John M. Pearson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL

David T. Green, John M. Pearson, “Social Software and Cyber Networks: Ties That Bind or Weak Associations within the Political Organization?,” hicss, p. 117b, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’05) - Track 5, 2005.

The 2004 U.S. Presidential election has tapped into the online medium to reach the growing demographic of online citizens. In the Democratic Party’s primary season, the Howard Dean campaign organization proved to be phenomenally successful at incorporating the online medium into its fundraising and grassroots mobilization, going beyond the online organizing and fundraising success of campaigns of John McCain in 2000. Both the Dean and McCain organizations were praised for their use of the Web to organize at the “grass-roots” level as well as their accomplishment in raising money. The current paper examines the unique social network ties that are created through the use of social software (i.e. blogs, email, instant messaging, meetup.com), specifically focusing on its use by political campaigns to engage potential voters in what could be considered a growing electronic democracy. Media richness is also taken into account.
Full Article Text: pdf Text

UK’s Hansard Society research examines the potential of political blogging
Key findings from Political Blogs - Craze or Convention? are:

• Blogging has the potential to significantly impact on political engagement and political processes as they provide an opportunity for alternative informal voices to enter into the political debate without a great deal of cost or effort.
• Blogging breaks down the barriers between public and privates spaces and allows elected representatives to put across their individuality and personality.
• The availability of low-cost, low maintenance authoring software means blogs are far easier to construct and update than conventional websites.
• The most appealing blogs are those which provide genuine debate between bloggers and visitors to the blog. Blogs that do not offer this facility give visitors little reason to return.
• At the moment, political blogging is still regarded as the pursuit of internet connoisseurs rather than ordinary members of the public. While our jury found blogs easy to navigate, they found the tone of content unappealing.
• Blogging has the potential to be of enormous benefit to MPs and other elected representatives who use it as a listening post rather than another tool to broadcast their ideas, achievements or party dogma.

See also

• Effective Political Blogging - Doc Searls, Cameron Barrett, Mitch Ratcliffe and Halley Suitt [recorded live by IT Conversations at the O’Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In] Ross Mayfield’s Notes
• Evolution of Political Blogging - Samuel Rose
• Election 2004 - Ed Cone, Session Leader - Bloggercon III - IT Conversations. (blogged by Renee Blodgett and others)

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.

CNET News.com

Congress catching on to the value of blogs

When someone calling himself “John Kerry” posted a diary on the popular liberal community blog dailyKos last week, its members reacted with both suspicion and amazement.

Congressional bloggers

Eleven members of Congress have jumped into the blogosphere so far. Some have gone the whole nine yards and allow readers to publish responses to their musings. Other aren’t there yet.

See also:

BBC: Bloggers take on politicians