I’m at a tutorial on Tuesday discussing “elections 2.0” at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, and one of the things I want to cover is Web 2.0 technologies’ positive role in countering deceptive campaign practices. I’m planning on using some examples from the Obama activism work I’ve been doing on Facebook, as well as some other sites I’ve tracked:
- the “know your rights” work the One Million Strong for Barack group did for Texas and Ohio. group members got calls from a couple of people who had attended the Texas caucuses saying how valuable it was
- the Courage Campaign’s “count every vote” petition in Los Angeles County, which led to counting most (not all) of the votes on the deceptive ballots
- an incident in the Ron Paul for President group where I thought he had left the race — because of a Washington Post headline saying “Ron Paul drops out” which turns out to be totally false. [The Ron Paul supporters had great fun at my expense … fooled by the mainstream media!]
- the ClintonAttacksObama wiki
- the repeated deconstruction in the Obama group of the “you must fear the Republicans” message we now see as embedded in so much mainstream media coverage
Of course, these inevitably reflect my own experiences, knowledge, and perspective; so it would be great to supplement with others’.
What are some other good examples of online groups countering deceptive election practices?
jon
PS: I also posted variants of this in several higher-traffic places, including the One Million Strong for Barack Facebook group, the US politics tribe on tribe.net and the Congressman Ron Paul for President Facebook group … please respond wherever you like, and repost and link freely!
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