Open-source political campaign

Open-source political campaigns, open-source politics, or Politics 2.0, is the idea that

The term was further refined in its current usage by a story in The Nation by Micah Sifry which appeared days after the 2004 election.^[1] Sifry wrote that open-source politics means "opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. It would mean moving away from egocentric organizations and toward network-centric organizing." Since Sifry's article, the term has appeared on numerous blogs and print articles.

Since the

Those who believe that open-source politics will have a major impact on elections and government include many former staffers of Gov. Howard Dean's political campaign, many political bloggers, and members of the New Politics Institute, the Personal Democracy Forum, and the Center for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.^[8]

Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales was asked by Mother Jones about his thoughts on the potential impact of open-source politics on old models of political campaigning such as polling and TV attack ads. He said this:^[9]

Hopefully, you start to see a little bit of diminished effectiveness when people can talk back to attack ads. In the past, when you'd see a vicious attack ad, you might find it distasteful, but you might also wonder if that person did that horrible thing. Online, you begin to see some of those things start to unravel, and people responding and saying, "Yeah, this is an attack ad, and this is what really happened." Then you get a more interesting dialogue around that.

A lot of the polling that goes on is push polling, in that the questions being asked are being framed to get answers they want. Those kinds of things get harder to sustain when you have a large body of people who can push back and put out an alternative point of view.

The rise in the use of social media for revolutionary purposes and political activism has been shown in academic literature and surpasses previous forms of political activism in terms of popularity and influence. World leaders are taking notice of social media driven activism and British Prime Minister David Cameron was even quoted during the Tottenham riots as saying, “Everyone watching these horrific events will be struck by how they were organized via social media”.^[10] This exemplifies the power that social media and Web 2.0 platforms are capable of having to advance social change and political change. Historically, social and political activism has been organized and pursued through traditional means, such as posters, word of mouth, and the various forms of media. Social media revolutions include the use of numerous social media platforms that make up the “Web 2.0”. Twitter is at the heart of social activism and can be used proactively to accomplish many different end goals.

We can look to Chander and Fuch’s research for evidence of technological change, as both cases being studied took place around 2011. Although 2011 was only four years ago, technology has the tendency to advance so quickly that once a certain technology is on the market, new technology is already being developed to replace the existing technology. This may hold many different potential futures for social media driven activism, whether for the greater good of citizens or perhaps giving state governments more power to fight activism or potential activism before it even starts.

Information Communication Technologies (ICT) encompass a wide range of technological means that give access to various forms of media, the Internet, social media, and other technologies. The complexity of ICTs around the world differs greatly between the Global North and Global South, as access to funds to purchase ICTs in the Global South is limited. The Global South has a large number of radios compared to the rest of the world due to their wide availability, ease of use, and limited technology needed to operate. Global South states often do not have the technological advancements in place to support more complex technology, although the use of mobile phones to access the Internet is growing.^[11] Without these technologies available to citizens in states around the globe, with the most notable being Global South countries, the citizens are being put at a disadvantage from the start. Political problems such as corrupt governments, authoritarian regimes, and limited democratic functionalities, also hinder citizen participation in Global South states’ political activism because of the lack of technology available.

Skeptics

Some people discount the potential impacts.^[12] Skeptics include many people on the American political right, among them the lobbyist Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Others include Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, who has said open-source politics may eventually be co-opted by political parties.^[13]

See also

• E-democracy
• Radical transparency
• Participatory culture and technology
• Participatory democracy
• Collaborative e-democracy

References