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KurtNYC

(14,549 posts)
Tue Jun 24, 2014, 11:18 AM Jun 2014

Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet)

“The Internet has made it easier to find the others, but it is also making it harder to bind with each other with common focus. We collectively send out far more noise than signal, and we listen far less than we talk. We may not like to admit it, but our digital tools are shaping us far more than we are using them to reshape the world.”
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Meanwhile, no one reads those automated emails you send, as Sifry notes: “Most members of Congress and their staffs say they ignore emails or other social media messages from non-constituents, and pay little attention to all electronic communications they receive, whether from constituents or not. Letters, phone calls, and office visits matter much more.”

What about the promise of social media? Has it revolutionized human rights and effected widespread change? Not yet. A recent academic study of 257 international human rights groups between 2010 and 2012 revealed that media coverage was almost directly proportionate to their operating budgets. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam received half of all mainstream media coverage. Twenty-six organizations received 91 percent of all news coverage, as well as most Twitter followers, Facebook likes, and Youtube views. There are, of course, outliers. The Paris Review comes to mind in the literary community, with its 375,000 followers on Twitter, but many organizations with outsized followers were endorsed early by a particular social media service, in the case of The Paris Review, by Twitter. Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+ also promote organizations, but these decisions are increasingly tied to their savvy public policy agendas in Washington and beyond.
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Sifry concludes his book by examining three models that he feels offer the potential to deeply transform politics. These include Loomio, a New Zealand start-up that evolved from the Occupy movement, and SeeClickFix. a platform developed in New Haven to hold the city accountable for needed services, such as fixing potholes and taking care of stray animals. These tools allow for easy, de-centralized organizing amongst like-minded groups. He also notes the use of new voting schemes by members of the Pirate Party, in which a member can delegate votes to another member to vote on issues in which she has more expertise. The vote can be rescinded at any time, keeping the delegate accountable in what the Pirate Party calls “liquid democracy.” To organize effectively, Sifry argues, you don’t need to get along with everyone, you need systems that allow minor disagreements to give way to consensus on more important issues. Sifry has been able to examine many of these groups first-hand by hosting them at his annual technology and politics conference, the Personal Democracy Forum, where I was a Tumblr Fellow this year.


http://www.alternet.org/books/why-internet-hasnt-transformed-politics-yet?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
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