Is Government 2.0 overhyped?
More and more people are thinking that Government 2.0 is a hype which won’t last so much. It’s not any more about hackers developing tools to get some data from official sites, as more an more governments put open data and e-participation initiatives in their agenda.
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e-Government or e-Marketing?
Last week I spent two days at the Personal Democracy Forum in Barcelona. It was a very international conference which allowed me to know what’s the state of e-government worldwide. And it does not look very well: the conference was filled of e-marketers with e-governors not yet ready to talk about what they are doing. So what’s wrong?
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Manifesto: “In defense of fundamental rights on the Internet”
A group of journalists, bloggers, professionals and creators want to express their firm opposition to the inclusion in a Draft Law of some changes to Spanish laws restricting the freedoms of expression, information and access to culture on the Internet. They also declare that:
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Search engines and democracy
One of the most interesting classes of the Digital Media and Politics program at Stanford was given by Laura Granka, who works both at Stanford and at the Google User Experience Team. She explained how search engines work and how they influence politics and society thru their sites’s ranking.
Is digital media changing political representation?
One of the most interesting phenomena that politics is going thru is its disintermediation. As digital media allows any citizen to take part into politics and represent him/herself, representation has to adapt. Theoretically, mass media are getting rid of their political role and citizens are taking this role by themselves. At the same time, politicians are also not so necessary any more, as more and more people want to be able to take part in public decisions by themselves. But is this really happening?
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Changes in politics: from filling meetups to developing social networks
During the Social Media and Politics program at Stanford we had the opportunity of listening to Will Bunnett, senior e-mail writer of the Obama4America campaign. He gave to us great insider information of what was going on behind the web sites created for the elections. You can summarize it in the following way: Winning elections is not any more about filling meetups and stadiums, but about developing active social networks in order to involve people.
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Why there will never be an Obama in Europe?
One of the most interesting lessons we had in the Social Media and Politics class at Stanford was related to the Obama campaign. And the conclusion is clear: his case can not be copied in continental Europe. There will never be an Obama in countries like Germany, France or Spain, because our systems are too different.
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Is there more democracy with blogs?
As you know, I have being studying social and media and politics at Stanford University. And the relationship between blogging an democracy was one of the most relevant issues that we had to deal with. Obviously, there is not a single conclusion but some spare ideas:
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What’s going on in China?
My next trip will be to China. One of the good things about being in Silicon Valley is that I get to talk to lots of Asian people. This is packed of them! I had a very interesting conversation this evening at dinner with a Chinese entrepreneur. She started up this software factory in Chengdu and has just impressed me so much that I think this is going to change lots of things in the way I do business.
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Obama, the open government and why I am going to the US
Much has been said about how Barack Obama won the last election by using social networks and getting really close to geeks. But not so much has been written on what he’s doing to change the way the government works, to open it up. In order to find this out, I will be in the US during the next two months.
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