Technology and politics
With both Canada and the United States in the middle of an election campaign it has been interesting to see where the major focus in terms of where the campaigning is happening.
Last time around (for both countries) blogging was somewhat new, Wikipedia wasn’t the top result on next to every Google search, Social networking was in its infancy - facebook had just been founded - and had maybe 10,000 users.
Flash forward to now and it seems that the main battleground is online. We have seen Barack Obama raise millions of dollars from individual donors using the internet as a donation platform. We have seen people write blogs on the on the barackobama.com site itself. We have seen people seek information rather than wait for it to be pushed to them thousands gave their cell phone numbers to receive a text message the second Obama announced his running mate.
This set of elections has brought the rise of wikis to the forefront. We have seen people edit Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia biography before McCain’s pick was released and wiki wars from the parties have become far more common. We have seen the Liberal Party of Canada launch Scandalpedia - a “wiki style” site of attack articles against the Conservative Party of Canada. Likewise in the US we have seen McCainpedia from the Democrats.
We have seen Michael Moore release his film Slacker Uprising for free on the internet for people to download and watch bringing tonnes of publicity to young people to vote a specific direction.
We have facebook groups galore devoted to political causes, the social networks are becoming heavily politicized and are another front on the political battleground. For example the opposition to the Canadian DMCA aka Bill C-61 was organized on facebook and resulted in real protests and a major outcry from Canadians looking for a balanced approach to copyright reform.
The traditional communication medium, television debates themselves have utilized technology to enhance their effectiveness. One network, CurrentTV, broadcasted twitter messages on screen allowing people to “debate the debate” in real time. We saw little clips of people’s reaction in real time.
In addition, technology is removing the “barrier” of moderation power that traditionally belonged to very few people. We are seeing tools like Google Moderator which enable the power of the crowd to ask questions without an intermediary moderating the questions - more direct democracy.
Technology is getting the younger generations to pay attention to politics because they are able to be directly involved.
Technology is changing politics for the better. How long will it be until we see an entire platform on a wiki style front and having that platform used to elect a government?
Time will tell how technology will impact the results in October and November. In the meantime, get involved and don’t forget to realize that all the technology in the world can make you an informed citizen but you still need to vote!
Tags: "Political Technology", Campaigning, PoliTech, Politics