The rise of online political networks - individual contribution and mass participation

February 27th, 2007

Online political networks and online industry networks arise for similar underlying reasons. Advances in technology present opportunities for new structures and organisations that can capture, analyse and assemble political information for the audience. A significant proportion of the community is dissatisfied with the quality of information they receive, or the operation of governments. These individuals are likely to be inspired by recent events to establish, participate in or contribute to online political networks that address perceived deficiencies. They will evolve beyond correcting a problem to enhance our political systems. There are online political networks. However, there is no direct involvement by the community and many still seek to lobby established channels. Online political networks will move beyond lobbying intermediaries to aggregate individual contributions toward specific objectives. Early objectives will be defining and identifying the problems. Other networks will develop solutions, or implement the solution.

Online political networks could offer the individual the opportunity to make their contribution. These networks could be be modeled on the Linux community. Individual developers could write as little as 500 words of code to advance Linux. Online political networks will allow individuals to make small contributions to other issues which reflect their interests. People aren’t apathetic, they just don’t have an online network to channel their interests. The world faces many challenges. Our political leadership has not addressed them. The aggregated contributions of many individuals could provide leadership.

Online political networks are likely to fall into the following categories:

• Problem network: to research a specific issue, provide meaningful information and provide comprehensive information on the problem.
• Solution network: to develop a solution to an identified problem
• Implementation network: to lobby for and coordinate the delivery of the solution

The kernel for many of these networks are likely to be an existing web site or small group. These online political networks will only prosper if they service the unique needs of their constituents and apply principals of “open source” and “free software”.There are examples of online political networks that have emerged to service the unmet needs of large groups.

The degree of participation in these networks could also become a guide to public sentiment. They may also become an additional source of quality information for those with the time and interest to understand issues to a greater degree. They are likely to develop over time to wield significant influence over representative by circumventing “public relations” and directly participating in the political process.

There are, arguably, already online political networks. Many are staffed by small groups of volunteers. Most simply publish a web site and do not use the available technology and invite participation and coordinate contribution. There are some examples.

Example 1 - Online political network providing information about policies of political candidates
Project Vote Smart is a community initiative to overcome a perceived, or actual, deficiency. A group of people established Project Vote-smart to collect meaningful information about US political candidates and provide a clear statement of the policy of each politician on key issues. It may be the responsibility of the national media to provide an insight into political candidates. It may be their responsibility to entertain. Wherever, you may rest on this issue, the national media can not satisfy the needs of all people all the time. Online political networks will address the needs of these unserviced large groups. An extract from the Project Vote-smart is one example.

Extract (Project Vote Smart web site):

Here at Project Vote Smart, Americans young and old volunteer their time, take no money from special interest groups, and have committed themselves to an extraordinary effort that, if successful, will provide their fellow citizens with the tools for a reemergence of political power not known for half a century. Their idea is one you may have thought of yourself. It is a deceptively simple concept but enormously difficult to achieve and would not be possible without the collaboration of citizens willing to lay their partisan differences aside for this one crucial task.

Picture this: thousands of citizens (conservative and liberal alike) working together, spending endless hours researching the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups. Every election these volunteers test each candidate’s willingness to provide citizens with their positions on the issues they will most likely face if elected through the National Political Awareness Test (NPAT). This project is an historic undertaking. Citizens come together, not in selfish interest or to support one candidate over another, but to defend democracy. It is an extraordinary gathering of people committed to one purpose: to strengthen the most essential component of democracy — access to information — even as it suffers grave attacks from candidates and political parties, many who are now willing to manipulate information and deceive voters.

Example 2 - Problem definition, research networks and “open source” community journalism
I have found another good example of an online political network applying open source principles - The Centre for Cooperative Research. It originally evolved out of a project to assemble a timeline of the events of the September 11 2001 attacks called the Complete 9/11 timeline. It has evolved to invite community participation on many other issues (click here for their issues page). Unlike conventional media, it assembles a series of events that allow you to provide your own interpretation, rather than a singular event in isolation.

The following extract from the The Centre for Cooperative Research provides a description of its mission:

“The website is an experiment in open-content civic journalism. It allows people to investigate important issues by providing a space where people can collaborate on the documentation of past and current events, as well as the entities associated with those events. The website can be used to investigate topics at the local, regional, or global level. The data is displayed on the website in the form of dynamic timelines and entity profiles, and is exportable into XML so it can be shared with others for non-commercial purposes.”

Additional information about their model is available from their About Us page. This network is addressing a perceived, or actual, problem with the quality of information available about key US issues. I suspect this site will evolve further and upgrade its technology (at minimal cost) to be more accessible and compel participation from larger groups.

Online political networks are likely to deliver improvements to all political systems in use today. For representative democracies, they are likely to make the systems more “representative” of their constituents.

Example 3 - New global television broadcaster
The Participatory Foundation believes one of the problems of the world is the limited media outlets. The solution is to allow anyone worldwide to broadcast a television channel on any topic and allow any other individual to watch that channel.

www.getdemocracy.com - the home of democracy player

“Television is the most powerful medium in our culture, and it’s moving online. There’s a huge opportunity to hear new voices. But if video on the internet is dominated by just one or two huge video websites, we’re all in serious trouble. Openness, competition, and decentralization make the internet work. We need to ensure that online video has that same freedom.”

“Democracy Player keeps online video open by letting you connect to all of the big video hosting sites and thousands of independent publishers, all in one place. Don’t get locked in to one video host. We have two crucial advantages over traditional software companies. First, being a non-profit organization means our mission is to support our users, not create profits for investors. Second, by making our software free and open-source, anyone can contribute to helping us make the best video application in the world.”

www.participatoryculture.org - a non-profit organisation

Our mission is to build an open and democratic television platform.

• Television is the defining medium of our culture. There’s now an opportunity to create a television culture that is fluid, diverse, exciting, and beautiful. Built by people working together.
• The platform is open-source and built on open-standards. This matters because it keeps video flowing freely. When you lock people in to closed, proprietary services, you lose everything that makes the internet work.
• Television is moving online. Will it be the same narrow, top-down cultural stagnation that we see on traditional television? All the major media and computer companies are clamoring to control video online. If they succeed it will be a disaster.
• We don’t have to spend years playing catch-up. Open-source and open- standards can lead this fight for the future of video online.

Getdemocracy.com is about to be renamed to getmiro.com . “... the name also confused a huge number of potential users. In all our debates about whether you could call something ‘Democracy’ and how people would react to the name, we hadn’t realized that so many people would simply assume that the software was for politicians and videos about politics. We hear this response over and over, and it’s a real limitation to our user base. So we’re changing the name to Miro. We’ll working on a new icon / logo and a new website, which will be at getmiro.com.”

This is a global television system. Anyone, can broadcast a channel. Anyone, can subscribe to a channel. What are the consequences of every individual being able to broadcast a television channel?

Features of an online political network
Open source software provides can deliver a significant amount of functionality in a short period. I am currently writing an article titled “How to build an online network in 90 days?” This should be available shortly. Please call me if you would like to see the early draft. It outlines all the items that social and business entrepreneurs should complete to establish an online network. A subsequent article may address. I am also considering establishing a sample online network package to hasten the process of establishing an online network. I will ask a few of my colleagues to see if they would be willing to devote some time to this endeavour.

Entry Filed under: online social networks, Online political networks