In Year of Political "Big Data," NationBuilder Makes Voter Data Free
Thursday, September 13 2012
The team at NationBuilder announced Thursday that they were releasing API and limited bulk data access to a nationwide voter file with records on 170 million voters, for free.
"I'm a developer, I've wanted to build off of this data for like a decade and it's just completely impractical because it would just cost a ton of money to bring this together, a ton of time, you wouldn't get access through all the parties, the tools are all partisan," Gilliam said Thursday. "There's no ecosystem around it. And that's really stunted the innovation in the political tech world."
Read MoreWhy the iPhone Economy Is Drawing Silicon Valley Deeper Into Washington Politics
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Friday, September 14 2012
An expected 'spectrum crunch' is spurring Silicon Valley companies to look to Washington for answers.
As management of the country's wireless spectrum becomes more important to business, it's becoming more important in policy as well. And it's attracting the interest of the growing political constituency inside Silicon Valley as efforts continue to change the policies that undergird the way we run our wireless networks to accommodate the explosion in wireless traffic.
Read MoreFirst POST: Free Speech
BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, September 14 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: How events in the Middle East sparks conversations about American notions of free speech and Internet freedom; a step back from Internet censorship in Tunisia; how voter data is changing elections; and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More
On Curation: Celebrating Web of Change 2012
BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, September 13 2012
I've been to a lot of conferences over the years: PopTech, PCForum, eTech, Web 2.0, Government 2.0, South by Southwest, Transparency Camp, Netroots Nation, RightRoots, Politics Online, MESH, the International Journalism Festival, Guardian Activate, and re:Publica all come to mind. Many of these more than once. And of course, since 2004 I've curated twelve Personal Democracy Forum conferences, nine in NY and three overseas, with the help of my partner-in-crime Andrew Rasiej and our hardworking and devoted staff. But I've never experienced anything as soul-, heart- AND brain-satisfying as Web of Change (WoC). Here's why. Read More
You Gotta Have Friends: New Study Shows Facebook Can Get Out the Vote
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, September 12 2012
A new study by researchers led by U.C. San Diego that is being published tomorrow in the journal Nature offers detailed evidence that a non-partisan get-out-the-vote reminder on Facebook can also increase voter turnout--especially if they come with evidence that your real friends are also voting. Read More
In Egypt and Libya, Evidence Mounts: Unlikely 9/11 Unrest a Response to Film Clips Alone
BY Lisa Goldman | Wednesday, September 12 2012
It sounds like the plot of a B-movie: Mobs of enraged Muslims attack US embassies in the Arab world on the anniversary of 9/11 because of a film that purportedly insults the Prophet Mohamed. But the facts don't support the theory of spontaneous rage at a YouTube video gone viral. Read More
Text Message Donations Might Become a Viable Option for More Campaigns
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Friday, September 7 2012
In 2008, campaigns turned to SMS to ask for votes. In 2012, will they ask for money? Photo: Cazimiro / Flickr
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers:Recent action at the Federal Election Commission could make collecting donations via text message a more realistic proposition for campaigns. The two presidential campaigns are already able to collect donations from clients of several cellphone carriers by having them text a shortcode put to use by their election effort. Now, new FEC opinions and requests for opinions seem to be paving the way for more campaigns to get in on the action. Read More
This "Gangnam Style" Parody Video From A Group of Lifeguards Is Getting Attention for All the Wrong Reasons
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, September 11 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: What started out as a summer gag video by a few city lifeguards has turned into a controversy that's attracted international attention. Is the Southern California town of El Monte sticking to a policy that defends its reputation and prevents misuse of resources, or is it missing out on an opportunity by cracking down on a group of enthusiastic young employees? Read More
PDM Special Book Event, Sept. 24: Steven Johnson on the Rise of the 'Peer Progressive'
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, September 11 2012
Is there a new political philosophy emerging from things like open source software development; massive community sharing hubs like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Reddit; peer-to-peer social networking; experiments in "Liquid Democracy," and the rapid spread of resource sharing tools like ZipCar, AirBnb and Car2go? Is it time to start talking about replacing the "welfare state" with the "partner state"?
On Monday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. at the New York Law School, I'm looking forward to exploring all those questions and more with noted author Steven Johnson, whose new book "Future, Perfect" is must-reading for people who believe in the power of open, collaborative peer-to-peer networking to achieve real social progress.
Read MoreGovernment Transparency Sites: Moving into the 21st Century
BY David Eaves | Monday, September 10 2012
The new Italian open data portal, OpenCoesione, represents a genuine effort by governments to recognize how an online medium should be used, even if in a narrow context. These sites are never going to attract a million page views, and I don’t think they should be judged by that standard. What they are really doing is replacing the linear, often opaque, and almost always boring PDF or printed reports that detail how a program is delivered. Read More
In the Middle East, Marginalized LGBT Youth Find Supportive Communities Online
BY Anna Lekas Miller | Thursday, September 6 2012
In the Middle East, where homosexuality is so taboo that until very recently there was no word to describe it in Arabic, LGBT youth are increasingly turning to the Internet for support and community building. Read More
How an Online Community Jogged Paul Ryan's Memory About His Marathon Time
BY David Parry | Thursday, September 6 2012
The Paul Ryan marathon story hits the trifecta of interests for me: politics, the Internet, and running. Appealing both to my academic interests and my personal obsession I have followed this story with perhaps at times too much focus, reading all the reactions, analysis, and even comment streams and discussion boards. But beyond the question of "what does it mean" that Ryan lied about (misremembered?) his marathon time is an important story about how politics changes with an Internet enabled public, and equally as important a lesson about both the potential and current limitations of this kind of Internet enabled political engagement. Read More
Gay Dating App Grindr Wants to Turn Users On to Politics
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, September 6 2012
The people behind Grindr, the location-based mobile dating app for gay men, announced today that they will be inserting political advocacy into a mobile platform more often associated with one-night stands.
According to the announcement, Grindr will push location-based, in-app messages asking users to take action as part of an initiative called Grindr for Equality. Grindr boasts 1.5 million users around the country and is making this announcement as a wide variety of issues affecting LGBT Americans will be on the ballot nationwide. For example, legislation or constitutional amendments in four states would affect same-sex marriage. So maybe politics isn't out of a dating app's league after all.
Read MoreOpening up the World's Legislative Bodies: The Global Game
BY David Eaves | Wednesday, September 5 2012
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and several partners have launched a Declaration on Parliamentary Openness that seeks, among other things, to make parliamentary information more transparent, accessible and available in bulk online. According to NDI, over 70 organizations in 50 countries, mostly transparency groups, have signed the declaration. Sadly, there are no parliaments or legislative bodies on the list. How effective will such a declaration be?
Read MoreIf Your Friend Writes a Political Rant on Facebook, Will It Change Your Mind?
BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, September 4 2012
There's a joke quote circulating on Facebook that goes like this: "'Your relentless political Facebook posts finally turned me around to your way of thinking,' said nobody, ever."
The funny thing is, that might not actually be true.
"People whose friends post some (or a lot of) political content on social networking sites are much more likely to say that they have changed their mind about a political issue or become more involved with a political issue after reading/discussing them on a social network (compared with people whose friends don’t post much political content)," Aaron Smith, a senior researcher at Pew, told me Tuesday via email.
Read MoreDemocrats Officially Adopt "Internet Freedom" As Part Of Their Party Platform
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, September 4 2012
Even as Democrats publish their official stance on the concept of "Internet freedom" as part of its official party platform this week, the Obama administration is coming under criticism for its secretive negotiation process regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that some groups say could crimp the same freedoms the party claims to support. Read More
Detroit Residents Can Now Track Buses in Real Time
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Wednesday, September 5 2012
Code for America and Detroit enable real-time bus arrival information via text messaging. Read More
Digital Pros to Meet at the Democratic National Convention
BY Sarah Lai Stirland and Nick Judd | Tuesday, September 4 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Online communications pros at the Democratic National Convention this week might see Obama for America Digital Director Teddy Goff or chief digital strategist Joe Rospars, but everyone kind of already knows what they're up to: Trying to re-elect President Barack Obama by heading up one of the most closely watched digital operations in history. Goff and Rospars are among dozens of digital Democrats who will be in Charlotte this week as Obama accepts his party's nomination for reelection. For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers, here's the start to a far longer list of people in Charlotte now who are worth meeting. Read More
Democracy Engine: A Personal Democracy Plus "Quick Look"
BY Sam Roudman | Friday, August 31 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Jonathan Zucker founded Democracy Engine in 2010 to serve as a sort of collective fundraising platform, allowing groups to raise money online for entire slates of candidates at once. In the process, his company solved a few problems related to raising money online for political candidates and causes — and now, he says, Democracy Engine's core business is in powering online fundraising for political groups of all partisan stripes, providing a way for organizations to raise money without worrying about the intricacies of merchant accounts. Read More
Website Yes, Legal Status, No: "No Papers, No Fear" Hopes to Build a Movement for Undocumented Immigrants
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Friday, August 31 2012
Under President Obama, 1.4 million people have been deported as of July, according to figures from Homeland Security's Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Obama has said that his administration is focused on deporting criminals and "dangerous" illegal immigrants. Obama also announced a new policy in June that defers deportation proceedings against undocumented immigrants who are under 31, came here before the age of 16, who have lived in the United States for at least five years, are in school (or have a certificate proving that they had a high school education) and don't have a criminal record. But even for those immigrants who arrived here while they were still children, the policy is a reprieve, not a pardon. Seizing on a wave of public support that seemed to begin to crest last year, when former Washington Post and Huffington Post journalist Jose Antonio Vargas announced that he was not in this country legally, immigrants without legal status here are using the Internet to assert an American identity anyway, and that the problem lies not with them but with United States policy on immigration and citizenship. Read More
In Georgia's Troubled Border Region, Text Messaging is Fostering Community Safety
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, August 28 2012
On the troubled northern border of Georgia, next to the disputed territory of South Ossetia, where two wars have been fought in the last two decades, an NGO has been quietly pioneering a new kind of distributed reporting system, one that uses SMS text messaging and the web to combine the data-rich mapping of Ushahidi with the meticulous requirements of human-rights researchers. In a region where few people have internet access, they've come up with an ingenious solution for data gathering via text. Read More
No, That Research Does Not Suggest Online Voter Registration Could Reduce Turnout
BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, August 29 2012
Research described yesterday as indicating that online voter registration could reduce turnout actually says nothing of the sort. Read More
'Internet Freedom' Is a Republican Platform Plank; Democrats To Have a Policy, Too
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, August 28 2012
The concept of "Internet freedom" is expected to become part of the Republican party platform for the first time on Tuesday when the party's platform committee votes to ratify language that it had drafted earlier last week. The move addresses the recent demands of dozens of Internet activists and groups for both parties to adopt language addressing the issue, and illustrates the enduring impact of the movement created by the broad protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act in January. Read More
How Participatory Budgeting Is Transforming the Way New York Funds Neighborhood Projects
BY Joe Maniscalco | Tuesday, August 28 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Usually, when it comes time to fund capital improvement projects in large municipalities like New York City, it’s local elected officials who ultimately decide how taxpayer money is spent in their districts.
Last year, however, following prior success in Chicago, democracy-minded groups like the Participatory Budgeting Project and Community Voices Heard convinced four New York City Council members to hand over the purse strings to their constituents through a process called participatory budgeting.
Here's what the city has learned so far, and how some City Council districts will continue an expanded experiment with the system this year.
Read MoreThe Digital Pros to Meet at the Republican National Convention
BY Sarah Lai Stirland and Nick Judd | Monday, August 27 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: By the end of Monday Tampa, Fla., will be full up with Republicans planning to converge on its Tampa Bay Times Forum for their national convention. Among the scores of convention delegates, lobbyists, political operatives and campaigning candidates will be a host of digital campaigners — both longtime pros in the emerging field and up-and-comers hoping to ply their trade.
For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers, here's the beginning of what could be a far longer list of digital pros going to Tampa this week and worth seeking out for coffee or a beer — just a few of the names you might know, or should know, when it comes to the right's digital communications. We did our best to prime the pump with a mix of people who you might already know from CNN and people who have been working busily behind the scenes.
Read MoreIn Tampa, a Citizen-Made Map Lets You Watch the Watchers
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Monday, August 27 2012
With the recent launch of RNCCTV, an HTML 5 map of a new network of surveillance cameras installed by Tampa's police in preparation for the Republican National Convention, city residents now have a slightly clearer picture of how (or at least where) they're being watched by law enforcement authorities.
RNCCTV uses scripts from Leaflet, data from Open Street Map and citizen reporting by Gales himself to reveal to the public where exactly the Tampa police have placed its $2 million network of security cameras. The site provides a bird's eye view of the location of the cameras in downtown Tampa, but with permission, it can use the location of smartphone owners in downtown Tampa to show them where the nearest camera is located.
Read MoreFrom TXTMob to Twitter: How an Activist Tool Took Over the Conventions
BY Micah L. Sifry | Saturday, August 25 2012
The journo-political industrial complex is headed for the national party conventions this weekend, with more than 15,000 journalists along with thousands more Republican delegates, activists, party operatives and outside ... Read More
The Egyptian Twittersphere, 18 Months Into the Revolution
BY Lisa Goldman | Saturday, August 25 2012
In January 25 they were the face of the Egyptian revolution. Young, tech savvy, fluent in English, Cairo-based activists tweeted constant updates from the streets of the Egyptian capital. Their photos, videos and live reporting catapulted many of them to celebrity, especially after Hosni Mubarak resigned. Where are they today? Read More
How the Obama Campaign Used GIFs, "Glee" Actor to Score Wins on Tumblr
BY Miranda Neubauer | Friday, August 24 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Emailed GIFs are the newest form of Obama campaign outreach, but Obama for America is no stranger to the animated medium.
The campaign has been using GIFs on its tumblr for at least seven months, reblogging some and creating others on its own — and engaging with Tumblr users along the way.
Read MoreHow the White House Plans to Make Innovation Fellowships Work
BY Christian Bourge | Friday, August 24 2012
Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Yesterday morning, the Obama White House launched a new fellowship program aimed at bringing technological innovation to the federal government by fast-tracking the work of online development and tech start-up experts who will serve six-month stints at various federal agencies.
“What we are gunning for is an ecosystem of innovation,” U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park told techPresident following the morning announcement of 18 new Presidential Innovation Fellows at a White House event.
Here's how the administration plans to make Silicon Valley culture work in the White House.
Read More[OP-ED] White House Innovation Fellows: Where Are the Women?
BY Merici Vinton | Friday, August 24 2012
Former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tech team co-founder Merici Vinton writes: "On Thursday, the White House announced their new Presidential Innovation fellows and with only 2 of the 18 fellows women it left me wondering, where are the women?" Read More
What to Do When Open Data Is Either Wrong, Scandalous, or Both?
BY David Eaves | Thursday, August 23 2012
David Eaves asks: How do governments and advocates handle open government data if it misreports the facts? Read More
If Books Were Votes, Obama Would Beat Romney, And Congress Would Go Far Right
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, August 21 2012
The folks at Amazon have just unveiled a seductive piece of eye-candy called the "Election Heat Map of 2012" that categorizes 500 top book titles as either "red" or "blue," and then breaks out current book-buying data state-by-state, offering a near-real-time look at which political books are more popular where. Right now, 56% of the political books being purchased are "red" and 44% are "blue"--and the accompanying map suggests that people in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Washington, DC are the only ones swimming against that trend, with Pennsylvania the only state with neutral reading interests. At the same time, Barack Obama's long-selling "The Audacity of Hope" is outselling Mitt Romney's "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness" by a margin of 2-1 in the last thirty days. The heat map is fun to look at, but has to be taken with a huge spoonful of salt. Read More
How a Romney Gaffe that Wasn't Went Viral on the Web
BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, August 20 2012
"I never tried to pretend that the original 'RMoney' image was real, and acknowledged that it was faked shortly after I posted it," said Dave Allsopp, co-founder of the liberal site Democratic Underground. "But I understand that since then people have been confused as to whether it is real or not. As I said, that's probably the main reason why it has spread so far."
Read MoreIs Sina Weibo a Means of Free Speech or a Means of Social Control?
BY David Eaves | Friday, August 17 2012
Over noodles in Beijing, David Eaves and Michael Anti discussed how Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging platform in China, actually creates a new means of social control for the central Chinese government. While it allows dissent, Anti argues, Weibo serves as a central platform for citizen speech — operated by a company over which the Chinese central government can exert significant influence. Read More
Quantifying this Year's "Lame" Presidential Campaign
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, August 16 2012
According to data from The 4th Estate Project, produced by former Neiman Fellow Bryan Rich and software developer Michael Howe, seventeen percent of statements attributed to the Obama campaign or the White House in a campaign story come without a person's name attached. Likewise, nobody is named as responsible for twenty-one percent of Romney campaign statements. These exclude statements from the candidates themselves. These figures are released exclusively to techPresident as disappointment mounts among political observers at the focus in this presidential campaign on personal attacks and relatively narrow issues. Read More
Why Sun Co-Founder Scott McNealy Supports The Romney-Ryan Ticket
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, August 16 2012
Here's an edited Q&A with Scott McNealy, the co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, one of the early drivers of innovation in computing and the Internet before an acquisition by Oracle. Sun's mantra, "the network is the computer," was prophetic. McNealy is now chairman and cofounder of mobile startup Wayin, but he's also active in politics as a bundler for Mitt Romney. In an edited Q&A, McNealy lays out one case for Romney as a candidate for Silicon Valley. Read More
Why Julian Assange is Wikileaks' Single Point of Failure
BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, August 16 2012
Julian Assange is back in the news today because, after nearly two months of holding out in Ecuador's London embassy, he has been granted "political asylum" by the Ecuadorian government. The decision has set off a diplomatic stand-off, with the U.K. government threatening to revoke the embassy's diplomatic status, and Ecuador responding with anger. In this article, I argue that the cause of transparency is far, far bigger than the legal troubles of one brilliant, courageous but ultimately flawed individual. Unfortunately, he has turned into Wikileaks' single point of failure. Britain ought to let Assange to Ecuador, because there's little chance he can get a fair trial in either Sweden or the United States, but then let's be done with him. Those of us who want freedom of information to thrive should learn a key lesson from Assange's case. For information to flow freely, there can't be any single point of control. Read More
Timeline Update: Why TCP/IP Is Inherently Political, According to Vint Cerf, One of Its Inventors
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, August 15 2012
Since yesterday afternoon, when we launched the "Politics and the Internet" timeline here at techPresident, we've been getting emails and tweets suggesting additions and corrections. So, I'm going to start blogging the changes as we make them, starting with this one, and we're going to compile those changes on this page, as the timeline grows. Read More
SEND TIPS>
Got Tips, leads, or suggestions for tech President? Email tips@personal-democracy.com
more topics
- SOPA/PIPA
- Hip or Hype?
- Civic Hacking
- Grassrootsiness
- Debates 2.0
- Email Watch
- Blogging
- Revolution 2.0
- Occupy Wall Street