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5Across
The Importance of Free Speech Online in Iran, China, Kenya
In a crisis, governments will often curtail freedom of the press, censoring or shutting broadcasts and newspapers. But blocking websites, slowing the Internet or cutting off SMS messaging can be harder to do. Stopping the flow of information online can be a difficult task, as the Iranian government has learned over the past few weeks, as protesters have posted images...
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World View
How Will Iranian Protests Change Twitter?
There's been much ado about Twitter's role in the political protests in Iran, and for good reason. With the Iranian government expelling foreign journalists, outlets like CNN scrambled to uncover sources where they could. They found these sources among the din of unverifiable messages surfacing on Twitter. It's been fun reading mainstream media accounts of how Twitter is, in a...
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5Across
Twitter Mania: Will Twitter Change the World?
Twitter has become a multi-headed phenomenon since MediaShift devoted a week to covering micro-blogging two years ago. Twitter is now established as a new form of communication, an early warning system for breaking news, and a startup company in San Francisco that has no discernable income. And with the power of Oprah, CNN and Ashton Kutcher, it has become...
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Public Relations
Issue Advocacy on the Internet, Part 1
The Internet has been alternately characterized as participatory, conversational, and collaborative. By empowering its users to create (not just consume) content, it is by design a more democratic medium than any other. There has been plenty of discussion about how, by giving everyone a public voice, the Internet is upending conventional power dynamics and enabling a new generation of opinion...
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Digging Deeper
Building the Ideal Community Information Hub
Problem: Where can people find the local information they need, whether it's about a school board meeting, a new construction project or a nearby robbery? Solution: A community hub, with all the information aggregated in one online source and pushed out via libraries, in-person meetings, community radio, small run print publications and cable access TV. That's my conclusion after studying...
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PoliticalShift
Live-Blogging Netroots Nation's New Media Summit
SAN FRANCISCO -- I am in the swanky Bently Reserve building in downtown San Francisco for the Netroots Nation's New Media Summit, affliated with the liberal blog Daily Kos. On the agenda today are panels on the evolution of journalism and new media, the wisdom of crowds, social media for social good, and using video to expand your audience....
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
ProPublica's ChangeTracker Lets You Watch Government's Moves
The Obama administration has already made strides toward greater transparency and better use of technology in government, but has promised even more. It's important to make sure that President Obama and his people act on those promises. One way to do that is to watch the government's footsteps online. ChangeTracker makes this possible, and not just for government sites -- it can be used to track changes on any website.
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NewspaperShift
Live-Blogging Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting at Berkeley
BERKELEY -- I am at the University of California-Berkeley for the 3rd Annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium this weekend. It's an invite-only event run by Lowell Bergman, known for his work at "60 Minutes" (and being played by Al Pacino in "The Insider"). The theme this year is "Reporting on Corruption," and included a preview showing of...
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AdvertisingShift
Political Blogs' Double Whammy: Post-Election, Deep Recession
This week several major bloggers -- most politically right-of-center -- will see the shuttering of their blog ad network. Pajamas Media, which launched in 2004 and provided advertising for conservative bloggers like Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin, announced earlier this year that it would close down its display advertising for blogs in order to put more focus on its online...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Represent Helps New Yorkers Track Their Politicos
The New York Times' Represent is a data aggregator and sorter that points to information about elected representatives in New York City. If New Yorkers enter an address, they can see their political districts (Congressional, Assembly, Senate and City Council) and representatives. Represent will also track what their representatives have been doing through a recent activity feed from NYT articles and congressional votes.
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PoliticalShift
Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age, Part 2
We're a nation at war. At war not with another nation, but with a hateful ideology violently expressed: terrorism. Every militaristic move a terrorist makes is designed to intimidate, frustrate, agitate....in short, communicate. Physical destruction and loss of life, crass as it sounds, are means to those ends. In this sense, the war of ideas is no longer a metaphor or a figure of speech -- it's a literal war in which we now find ourselves. And in a war of ideas, public diplomacy will be an important tool in our national security toolkit.
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PoliticalShift
How Obama Inspired Israeli Politicians' Online Campaigns
Just as television changed the way political campaigns were run in the 1960s, the Internet has changed the way political campaigns are run in the 2000s. Upwards of 70 million people watched the more aesthetically-pleasing JFK debating the more radio-suited Nixon on the tube in 1960. Nearly 50 years later, the YouTube debates of 2008 allowed people to ask their...
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Public Relations
Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age, Part 1
"What is public diplomacy?" was the first question that Ted Koppel posed at the recent Media as a Global Diplomat conference attended largely by public diplomacy professionals. I was surprised that the panelists, including the outgoing Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy & Public Affairs, couldn't readily agree on an answer to this foundational question. Koppel continued, "I thought [public...
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World View
Monarchs Use 'Lese Majeste' Laws to Silence Online Critics
"When it comes to a monarchy, all reason goes away," according to a Thai reporter quoted in a Reporters Without Borders report on free expression in Thailand published this week. He was commenting on the multiple charges of lese majeste -- injury or insult to the king -- brought against journalists and writers in his country, where speaking negatively about...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Washington Post's 'Web Ninjas' Build Map-Timeline Combo
TimeSpace, a Washington Post project, is a coverage mapping framework that displays content from multiple sources in space (via a map) and time (via a timeline). A display map, covering anything from a single city block to the world, is tagged to show viewers where news is being covered. Viewers can also view the news map as it appeared at different points over the preceding hours or days, giving them a picture of how the news events unfolded over time.
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
ProPublica Puts Spotlight on Tracking TARP Money
ProPublica's Show Me the TARP Money is a simple map and chart reflecting the recipients of money provided through TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), a federal program that authorizes the U.S. government to buy assets from struggling financial institutions in an effort to remedy the subprime mortgage crisis. The site shows institutions that have been approved for assistance and keeps a running total of the number of institutions, the amount committed, and the amount invested so far. There is an RSS feed and a widget for the site as well.
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PoliticalShift
Obama, Congress Enlist 'Direct to Constituent' Communications
Professional communicators are paying close attention to the rise of "direct to consumer" (DTC) communications. This is a phenomenon largely enabled by the rapid proliferation and adoption of online technologies, whereby organizations can communicate directly to the public without filters or mediation from the press. Corporate blogs or advocacy groups' online "action alerts" are just a couple examples. As a...
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MediaShift Innovation Spotlight
Innovation in Inauguration Coverage
This week, instead of focusing on one innovative journalism project, I'd like to highlight some of the many projects that came up covering Barack Obama's inauguration. The first question I asked myself as I started collecting links was, "Well, this is a cool way to cover the event, but is it journalism? For example, I saw a lot of "official"...
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PoliticalShift
Government 2.0: How Social Media Could Transform Gov PR
It's easy to see governments as nameless, faceless monoliths, something impersonal or, even worse, untrustworthy. Much of that is because government culture remains steeped in traditional ideas about public relations and outreach work, notions that have become archaic in an Internet-enabled, hyper-connected world. Just as private companies are learning to embrace social media to manage brand reputations, governments must adapt...
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World View
Burmese Blogger Sentenced to 20 Years For Reporting on Protests
In many countries, you have to commit a serious crime to be sentenced to 20 years in jail, but in Burma this can happen just for using the Internet. There are almost 69 cyber-dissidents in jail worldwide, yet Burma's Nay Phone Latt has become the first blogger to receive such a lengthy prison term. His crime? To have informed the...
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Legal Drama
Canadian Court Rules Linking to Libel Isn't (Necessarily) Libel
Linking to content is the essence of the online experience -- it's the "Web" in the World Wide Web. But there's a lot of legal gray area around linking, and surprisingly few court rulings providing guidance as to the circumstances when linking could result in liability. A court in Canada has now weighed in on the question of liability under...
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World View
Nigeria Joins List of Countries Harassing Bloggers
On October 19, U.S.-based Nigerian blogger and journalist Jonathan Elendu of Elendu Reports was arrested by the Nigerian State Security Services (SSS) upon his arrival at Abuja airport. It was some days before the SSS announced that Elendu had been charged, first with money laundering and then sedition. Yet another report claimed he was charged with sponsoring a guerilla news...
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Weblogs
Poll Crashers Tilt Unscientific Polls Their Way
During the Republican National Convention, NOW, a PBS weekly TV news magazine, posted an unscientific poll on its website asking viewers to vote on whether they thought vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was qualified for the position. Like most polls the show posts every week, it was taken down from the front page and replaced by a new one after...
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PoliticalShift
LIVE Election Day Chat with Special Guests!
I will be joined by an all-star lineup of new media experts, academics, and social media gurus to look at how online coverage of Election Day is going -- with pointers to the most innovative mashups, maps, video blogs and more. The plan is to chat today from 10:30 am to around 9 pm Pacific Time. Be sure to join...
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PoliticalShift
Citizens, Media Use Social Media to Monitor Election
In a YouTube video uploaded on October 24, a husband and wife couple from Oregon sit at their kitchen table and fill out their mail-in voting ballots for the 2008 election. The wife explains to the camera that Oregon has had mail-in voting for "about the last 10 years," and the two walk the viewer through the entire voting process,...
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Thought Leader Q&A
Current TV's 'SuperNews' Comedy Gauges Success on Web Views
I live about 7 minutes' drive from the headquarters of Al Gore's innovative Current TV in San Francisco, yet my cable system, Astound, still doesn't carry the channel. So when I was visiting my parents last summer in St. Louis, I made a point of checking it out. The first thing I saw was a cartoon spoof of social networking...
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Guides
Your Guide to Political Polling Sites
We are an impatient nation. We can't stand waiting until election day to find out who will win an election -- we want to know who will win now. That explains the popularity of political polling simulations, aggregators and analysis blogs in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election. Because we have such a fascination with winners and losers, we want to see the current state of the race on a daily, even hourly, basis, and the web can deliver that in spades.
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Digging Deeper
Political Fact-Check Sites Proliferate, But Can They Break Through the Muck?
As the U.S. elections near the finish line, the presidential campaigns are throwing around enough verbal attacks and inflammatory advertising to make the average voter's head spin. Fortunately, there are now three excellent sources for fact-checking political discourse online: Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org, the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly's PolitiFact and the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog....
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PoliticalShift
How Greenwald's Brave New Films Spreads Its Political Message Online
Last month, Politico's Mike Allen asked presidential hopeful John McCain the seemingly innocent question of how many houses he owned. McCain's response -- "I'll have my staff get to you" -- became a major focus for both the media and Obama's campaign, who repeated it in just about every speech to illustrate that the Republican candidate was "out of...
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World View
Activists Face Obstacles Online in Winning Women's Rights in Iran
Women in Iran have learned to unleash the Internet's potential to promote freedom. In the country that has, according to the OpenNet Initiative, experienced the most explosive online growth in the Middle East, the Internet has become a battleground between a repressive regime and the increasingly active feminists demanding the end of legal discrimination against women. Women activists, who...
more »Your Take
Where do you get U.S. election news online?
What sites do you follow for US Election coverage?I want to know which sites you trust for news on the US election: blogs, news sites, newspaper sites, aggregators, video sites? Share your thoughts and check out responses at www.pbs.org/mediashift With the U.S. election season hitting its final stages, political junkies are inundated with information online. But where do you go...
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Embedded Report
Blogger Conditions Worsen as Many Defend Palin Pick
Shame on us, the media, for thinking the Republican National Convention would pale in comparison to the Democrats' show in Denver last week. For bloggers on both sides of the aisle here in St. Paul, what the RNC has lacked in strawberry-lemonade smoothies, it has more than made up for with juicy stories. While Hurricane Gustav may have stopped...
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PoliticalShift
Digg Puts Focus on Politics, Bringing Charges of Liberal Bias
Last week, Digg CEO Jay Adelson sat in a crowded room in Denver holding a stack of papers while facing a camera and trying to project his voice over the cacophony around him. Next to him sat a tired-looking U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who had taken a break from the Democratic National Convention to meet with Adelson....
more »Embeds
Blogs Help Humanize, Demystify Life in the Middle East
JERUSALEM -- Blogs exemplify the best and worst attributes of the Internet (and human nature). At their worst, blogs can be untruthful, bad sources of news and gossip. But without the profit motive, the need for immediacy, and the thirst for conflict, blogs can also help show a more complete picture of the Middle East. At their best, they can be a great source of anti-news and help demystify this murky region.
more »PoliticalShift
Bloggers Make Progress Covering Convention at DNC
DENVER -- Even for members of the traditional media here in Denver, access to floor seating at the convention has been scarce, and talk time with politicians and celebrities at the Democratic National Convention is a game of persistence and luck. Some days you see all the newsmakers, other days you're stuck on the outside with the gawkers, watching...
more »Digging Deeper
The Best 2008 Political Convention Coverage Online
In 2004, the major political conventions gave a few dozen bloggers press credentials, a historic moment for the new media outsiders. And this year, the political conventions have tried to be even more open to bloggers, video reporters, podcasters and new media. The Democratic convention credentialed 120 bloggers, and the GOP has credentialed 200 bloggers, according to Forbes. And the...
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PoliticalShift
Will the Big Tent in Denver Help Bloggers Break Through?
As the 2008 Democratic Convention quickly approaches, thousands of journalists will begin swarming into Denver for what is sure to be an around-the-clock media event. Reporters will interview throngs of convention goers to examine every facet of the political landscape and the implications it has for the upcoming election.
more »World View
China Partially Lifts Great Firewall for Media, but Access Remains Pricey
BEIJING -- Journalists scrambling to make Games-time deadlines might not make it to Badaling or Juyongguan during their trip overseas, but they're sure to become familiar with China's other Great Wall: the Great Firewall, that is. On July 31, Olympic officials admitted the International Olympic Committee had not yet secured unfettered Internet access to foreign journalists, leaving everyone to...
more »World View
A Mix of Skepticism and Hope on 'Propoganda Tour 2008'
We wrestle hi-def video cameras into our carry-on luggage, brandish SLRs at tourist attractions and arrange "Skype dates" with significant others half a world away. Blogging is the acceptable (and perhaps preferred) method of communicating with home, and the Internet at our hotel strains under the weight of so many Facebook photo uploads in so few hours. We are journalism students at the University of Missouri and volunteers at the XXIX Olympic Games, self-proclaimed new media experts and hopeless foreigners all at the same time.
more »Digging Deeper
Newspaper Vet Malcolm Finds Blog Religion with 'Top of the Ticket'
If you have preconceived notions about political blogging, Andrew Malcolm is here to shatter them. Malcolm, 64, has decades of experience as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief at the New York Times, and later as an editorial board member and feature writer for the Los Angeles Times. He has ink in his blood, but when he was tapped by the L.A. Times to help write the new political blog, Top of the Ticket, Malcolm became a quick convert to the online religion.
more »Digging Deeper
Net neutrality or network neutrality means that Internet service providers (ISPs) such as cable and telephone companies must treat all traffic equally that travels across their networks. That means that your broadband service provider couldn't block you from seeing a particular site or using a high-bandwidth service arbitrarily.
more »Weblogs
How Bloggers Covered Kenya Violence, Deal with Racism, Sexism
Within 24 hours of the outbreak of the post election violence in Kenya, Kenyan blogs were posting hour by hour reports. On December 31st there was a complete shutdown of the mainstream media.
more »Digging Deeper
Semi-Pro Journalism Teams Give Alternative View of U.S. Elections
Elizabeth Gotsdiner got Joe Biden's errant spittle in her mouth. Shantel Middleton got to ride on a Ron Paul blimp. Mayhill Fowler was following Obama canvassers and ended up helping them carry brochures for the candidate. Each of these folks represents a new class of semi-pro journalist tasked with covering the U.S. presidential election in innovative, more personal ways....
more »Digging Deeper
Politico 2.0: Ruffini Blogs, Twitters, Crowdsources Obama Donations
Patrick Ruffini is the epitome of the new breed of political consultant. He's a numbers wonk who swears by Microsoft Excel. He's a tech geek who's had his own political website since the mid-'90s, and he writes for various big-name group blogs such as TechPresident and TownHall.com -- as well as his own blog. And though he has worked...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Facebook Becomes Catalyst for Causes, Colombian FARC Protest
This morning, I received a notification on my Facebook profile that said if I sent a virtual plant to some of my friends, I'd help them "save the Earth." If you're a Facebook user, you probably wonder how much the incessant pleas by certain applications on the site might actually "change the world." Modules built to help you attack...
more »Open Source Reporting
How Our Next President Should Use Participatory Media
Today is President's Day in the U.S., celebrating the February birthdays of past presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. But rather than looking back, I'd like to look forward to the next president of the United States -- whoever he or she will be -- and consider how they might use technology and new media to be more responsive...
more »Citizen Journalism
Social Media, Google-Twitter Mashup and More on Super Duper Tuesday
11:02 am Pacific Time I'll be live-blogging the Super Tuesday election day here in the U.S. and will be highlighting all the efforts online to cover the day's events and results. I'm especially interested in finding the best social media sites, mainstream news sites and blogs and video coverage -- and am asking for your input on any innovative efforts...
more »PoliticalShift
Iowa Caucuses Blanketed by Twitter, Blogs, Video
If you were anywhere in Iowa yesterday, you might as well assume that anyone around you could report on what you were saying, even in what you thought was a private moment at a restaurant. That's the hard lesson learned by veteran GOP political strategist Ed Rollins, who was repeatedly flummoxed in a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace,...
more »Your Take
How important is digital media in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign?
As the U.S. presidential primary season quickly approaches, the question remains just how important the Internet and new media have been in the election race. While political tracking sites such as TechPresident can show how many Facebook friends the candidates have, or how many video views they've had on YouTube, there isn't a direct correlation between online popularity and actual...
more »Digging Deeper
TechPresident, 10Questions Put Spotlight on 'Voter-Generated Content'
Just as the Internet and technology have shifted the playing field in media, allowing bloggers and podcasters to help set the news agenda, so has the realm of politics been disrupted by technology that gives voters more power to inject their own issues into the fray. And in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, that disruption has been strongest in...
more »Weblogs
Can Internet, Blogs Sustain the Saffron Revolution?
When the ruling military junta in Burma cracked down on protesters, killing unarmed Buddhist monks, the world was watching. While mainstream journalists have to work undercover in Burma for fear of the junta's wrath, Burmese citizens and tourists were able to shoot photos and videos of the protests and transmit them to the outside world. The contrast between this...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
YouTube, Flickr Become Forces for Cultural Change
The term "social web" brings to mind images of people around the world interacting with each other without borders or barriers. With the arrival of more and more sites that help us connect, express ourselves and share media, it seems like we're advancing toward a more open Internet, in which everyone has the right to view or post whatever...
more »Your Take Roundup
Internet Offers Unlimited Time for Presidential Debates
One of the complaints most people have about televised politics and debates is the prevalence of the sound bite. There's never enough time for candidates to discuss issues in-depth or argue their point for more than a minute. Instead, we are stuck with the tyranny of zingers and one-liners, perfectly fit for highlights on SportsCenter, uh, I mean the...
more »Your Take
How would you update the presidential debates for the Internet Age?
The New York Times Op-Ed page recently asked a few experts to answer this question: If the CNN/YouTube presidential debates still had too much scripting and canned answers, how can we create a real new-media debate? Various folks answered, with Kevin Kelly saying candidates should have webcams attached to their heads 24/7, and Tom Brokaw joked that candidates should answer...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Face-to-Face Networking Trumps Panels at Conference
SAN FRANCISCO -- In my account of Supernova 2007 yesterday, I didn't mention one of the things that really irked me about the conference: the silence. When panelists were on the huge stage at the main ballroom in the Westin St. Francis Hotel, the large audience sat silent typing away at their laptops. While some sessions ended with a...
more »Your Take
Should online video of presidential debates be free for public use and remix?
Just who owns the video of presidential debates? Up until this point, the TV networks that broadcast the events held the copyright to that footage and could post it online, monetize it in whatever way they wanted, and restrict usage by other folks. But Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, a proponent of Creative Commons "copyleft" systems, started an online petition...
more »PoliticalShift
Online Presidential Debate Distances the Candidates
The handshake at the beginning. The sideways glances and furious note-taking. The occasional interruption. The partisan cheering. These are the hallmarks of presidential debates of years past. Yet, Yahoo, Slate and the Huffington Post believe that having the candidates in distant locations hooked up virtually online will make for a better "user-generated" debate. The troika of websites recently announced...
more »Digging Deeper
Sunlight Foundation Mixes Tech, Citizen Journalism to Open Congress
When people talk about corporate cutbacks in mainstream journalism organizations, there's almost a fervor about how our very democracy is in jeopardy because of the failings of Big Media in holding our government accountable. What such critiques fail to consider is that as citizens we can and will hold our government accountable, with or without the media apparatus. One...
more »PoliticalShift
Escaping the Bubble in Campaign Journalism
This week Arianna Huffington and I announced at the Huffington Post and PressThink a new project in campaign journalism.
more »PoliticalShift
2008 Candidates Jump Online with Early Blog Ads
There has been a delicate dance between political operatives and the Internet. While activists have been using blogs and new media to spread the word about politics or specific candidates for years, the politicians and their consultants have been wary of spending too much of their campaign chest on online marketing. They have largely stuck to the tried and true: TV ads.
more »Digging Deeper
TPMmuckraker Thrives as Political Corruption Runs Rampant
If Roosevelt lived today, he might add in "blog" to the list of places where muckrakers do their work -- and he probably would be a bit more scared of the work they're doing. One hundred years after Roosevelt coined the "muckraker" term for journalists who uncover corruption and fraud, bloggers have taken the mantle once reserved for investigative print journalists and created a new brand of muckraking that moves at the speed of the Net and involves collaboration with readers.
more »Citizen Journalism
Keeping an Eye on the Kenyan Parliament
One of the things I'm most proud of as far as my accomplishments go is being the co-founder of Mzalendo. At a basic level Mzalendo intends to monitor what Kenyan Members of Parliament are doing for their constituents. The Kenyan government generally operates in a very opaque manner and it is very difficult to obtain access to public information both online and offline. While there are some government offices that are trying to remedy this (the Office of Public Communications is one example), most of the information provided is generic.
more »PoliticalShift
Live Blogging the U.S. Mid-Term Elections
Today is election day in the United States, so despite my overall bad feelings about politics at the moment, I'm going back to my roots as a political junkie and watching the results as they come in around the country today. I'll be watching on TV and online at the same time, and considering the differences in media coverage in both mediums. The following post will be updated live throughout the day and night, with the most recent information at the top, and the time it was posted.
more »Your Take
Do you think we should vote in elections by mail or online?
As the mid-term U.S. elections are today, I thought it would be a good idea to consider the intersection of technology and politics once again. So far, the mix has been pretty toxic, with so many electronic voting machines coming under fire for a lack of paper trail or being susceptible to hacks. Oregon has gone around precinct voting problems entirely with a vote-by-mail system where people have a few weeks to mail in ballots or drop them off at their convenience, which raises the participation level. Jeremy Wright, who helped push through the system in Oregon, explains how it works on the Daily Kos blog. What do you think? Should other states switch to mail-in ballots? Or should we create a safe way to vote online as well? What would the problems be with online voting besides security concerns? What other ideas do you have to eliminate the problems of long lines, voting machine irregularities, and intimidation at polling places? Share your thoughts in the comments below and I'll run the best ones in the next Your Take Roundup.
more »PoliticalShift
Gallaudet University Protests Gain Global Audience
If you're a non-deaf person who generally follows U.S. national news, you probably have a vague idea that there have been protests going on at the only university for the deaf, Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC. You might not be sure why the protests are happening, except that the students don't want the incoming president, Jane Fernandes, to assume her new duties in January.
more »Your Take
What sources do you check for political news on the U.S. mid-term elections?
Now that the mid-term elections are less than a month away, we can ignore them no longer. With the Mark Foley page-enticement scandal smoking in the Beltway, the various nationwide races are heating up as the Democrats try yet again to take control of one or both chambers of Congress. There are plenty of news sources online to follow the races, from mainstream media sites such as CNN's Inside Politics to the conservative-blog aggregator, Pajamas Media's PoliticsCentral to liberal power-houses such as Talking Points Memo with its Election Central clearinghouse of polls. So where do you go online to follow the election races and results? Who do you trust for good information, and where do you feel you can have a say in a political community online? Or tell us if you prefer TV and newspapers for political coverage. I'll run the best comments in the next Your Take Roundup.
more »PoliticalShift
Transparency Key to Constructive Partisanship
Among the oddities of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act effort was that many of the major advocates -- who spanned the political spectrum from left to right -- had never worked together and did not meet in person until the day President Bush signed the measure into law.
more »PoliticalShift
Campaigns 2.0::Most Senate Candidates Shy Away from Blogs, Podcasts
Can a candidate's blog or podcast make a difference in a campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2006? No one knows yet. What we do know from 2004 is that Howard Dean's groundbreaking blog didn't help elect him to the presidency -- though it did build buzz and make him a short-lived frontrunner in the Democratic race. A recent...
more »NewspaperShift
Digging Deeper::Can Newspaper Letter Editors Stop Astroturf Onslaught?
People are so outraged by the Medicare drug program overhaul that they're writing letters to the editors of many newspapers to complain. And people are equally upset by gay marriage and are writing letters in support of the Marriage Protection Amendment. But there's one problem with these two sets of letters: Each set contains largely the same text, taken...
more »World View
Digging Deeper::Blogs, Wiki, Google Bomb Used to Free Egyptian Activist
Last August, when I was working on a story for Online Journalism Review about activists using technology to organize protests in Egypt, I made the mistake of focusing too much on blogs. One of the people I interviewed, Alaa Abd El Fattah, was quick to pounce on me for asking about blogs and only blogs, when Egyptians were using...
more »Legal Drama
Sock Puppetry::Are Blog Commenters Paid in Net Neutrality Debate?
When I posed a question to my readers on March 31 -- Should the government regulate Net neutrality? -- I was surprised to see how many readers opposed Net neutrality regulation. In the Your Take Roundup the following week, I even headlined it, "People Wary of Government in Net Neutrality Debate." Now word is spreading through the blogosphere that...
more »PoliticalShift
Free Hao Wu::Blogosphere Unites to Help Jailed Chinese Filmmaker
It's a strange sensation reading through the personal musings of Hao Wu on his Beijing or Bust blog. There is an entry, Teacher for Life, in which Hao recollects a recent meeting with a former teacher. The entry is dated February 22 -- the same date that the Beijing division of China's State Security Bureau arrested Hao, jailing him...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::Singapore Tries to Squelch Political Blogs, Podcasts
While many Americans have been focused lately on online censorship in China, few have noticed a similar practice in other countries such as Singapore. That island state is a parliamentary republic in theory, but has really been run by one dominant party in its history of independence since 1965 (see a Singapore historical timeline here). The mainstream media is...
more »Wikis
Email Debate::Wales Discusses Political Bias on Wikipedia
Conservative blogger Robert Cox, who writes the National Debate blog, told me he was amazed at the quality of Wikipedia and thought it was a great resource. But there was something about the free online community-generated encyclopedia that was getting under his skin -- what Cox believed was a liberal bias in many hot-button topic entries, despite Wikipedia's principle...
more »Your Take Roundup
Two-Tiered Net::People Wary of Government in Net Neutrality Debate
The debate over "Net neutrality" has heated up immensely over the past few weeks. Why the hubbub? Broadband service providers -- mainly telephone and cable companies -- want to charge some heavy-use sites such as Google and Yahoo more money for carriage on their systems, creating a kind of two-tier Internet. The issue has pitted companies such as Amazon,...
more »Weblogs
Israeli Elections::Live Blogging the Next Best Thing to TV
Before the 2004 U.S. elections, I considered political news on the Internet to be an addendum to the breaking news I would get from cable TV or the serious journalism of newspapers and magazines. But as the 2004 elections neared in October of that year, I realized that any serious political junkie was getting a much better fix on...
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::Email Trumps Blogs for Political Action in '06
As more people have broadband, more people are going online to get their news. The latest research from Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that 50 million Americans went online for news in a typical day in late 2005 -- up sharply from the number in 2002. And with the upcoming 2006 mid-term U.S. elections, you can count...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::Internet Gives All Sides in Israel-Palestine Debate
Many people living outside the Middle East would like to understand the political situation in Israel and Palestine. But the more you read online at blogs and opinion sites, the more you realize that it's not a simple situation of good vs. evil, or us vs. them. There are many ways to view the highly charged issues in this...
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Riding Talk Revisited::Politicians Speak Out About CBC Forums
In early February, I looked at an interesting project by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) called Riding Talk, where they provided a moderated forum for each and every riding (electoral district) in Canada before the late January elections. I had hoped to include the thoughts of a few politicians who participated in the forums but I didn't hear from...
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Digging Deeper::Reporters Without Borders Backs Online Freedom Act
While the Republican-majority U.S. Congress has favored less regulation of big business, one GOP lawmaker, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, has shown a willingness to regulate technology and Internet businesses in their dealings with China. Smith held prominent hearings on Capitol Hill on Feb. 15, compelling representatives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco to answer criticism of their...
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::Congress Takes Action on China Collusion
Various technology companies in the West have helped the Chinese government in its longtime efforts to censor the Internet and do cyber-surveillance. Over the years, these companies have excused their behavior with a variation on the same theme: We have to follow local laws when we do business in China, and we can't ignore China as it has become...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::CBC Offers Moderated Forum for Every Precinct
The hodge-podge of political discussion boards online can give you a headache. Usually it's a matter of who can scream the loudest and attack the fiercest. And if the subject is economics, someone will spout off on abortion. Plus, how can you find the right forum for the issues that concern you or your locale? The Canadian Broadcasting Corp....
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