As I said in other occasions, I am a supporter of geography and especially mapping as an effective, impacting way to show our world, the many different ways in which it could be interpretedand, thus, compare them.
This is the typical Red and Blue post-2008 elections America map, representing the states winner-takes-all system (few exceptions).
Large, red states to McCain, coast, norhtern border and a couple of blue central exceptions to Obama.
This is an even more "red" map, showing voting by county and adopting an ideal (not applied at National election stage) within county winner-takes-county system, showing a striking Republican spatial dominance...
How did we end up to this one, then?
Well, just resize and fit each state and county according to population (and thus weight in electoral votes) and use shades of purple for indicating percentage of votes.What you obtain is a much more sophisticated representation of the splendid (for voter turnout and passion) 2008 Elections, a metaphorical picture of Republican presence as an old mansion's spider's net, rather than a powerful red heart and, finally, a much more "purple" America.
Hopefully, and starting from Obama's discourse of inclusion and unity, this will really be a bit more the case and a more modern view of a big, heterogeneous country, still so important for the world.
Check Mark Newman's pages, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan for the whole story and have a look if you can at his latest book, The Atlast of the Real World.
Well, I have always known how intense the life of an activist could be, and my study of the "Amici di Beppe Grillo" Meetup network strenghtened some of my ideas, but make sure you hve a look at this game from the CNN election centre website.
Hilarious...And tiring! After 15 rounds I had enough and had a serious need for a real coffee (caffeine is an important element of the game itself ).
A good simple, colorful and effective way of showing to the general public what "campaign rush" means...And not a bad way to use a quick videogame. I'd love to try a more complex version of it now, something that would involve more than just responding to the phone, printing stuff, drinking coffee and e-mailing. Maybe there could be some Sim City-like management of cities and states or some Theme Park/Hospital-style of even/convention management. Then the financial part with media, advertising spending, fundraising, corporate partnerships..
There's lots of videogames involving economics, commerce, production, but little dealing with politics and activism.With elections lasting 2 years in US, there would be plenty of time for promotion as well.
Grab that phone! Can you take the hectic pace inside a campaign office? Propel your party to victory in our CNN Campaign Rush game.
I have recently been presenting at Royal Holloway's "Politics: Web 2.0 Conference" just outside London, extremely well organized by Professor Andy Chadwick and the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway.
Yes, perhaps the focus could partly be considered a bit "simplistic" and not too academic - Does web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship? - but in the end the event was fresh, enjoyable and cutting-edge, surely reaching its goals. A success.
Thanks to Andrew Chadwick for setting it up all and for the spirit and freshness he was able to transfer to the whole event.
Unsurprisingy, an academic who consistently deals with Web 2.0 is at the same time a very open, enjoyable and interactive person.
Despite not entirely matching my research interests - it is not always a disadvantage - and a clear (expected and pretty reasonable) bias towards American politics, elections, campaigns and candidates' strategies - rather than counter-politics, social movements and social activism - I had the opportunity to have my arguments heard by an excellent and surprising morning audience (including Mike Turk) and exchange my ideas with several scholars and practitioners.
Still struck by the gap in the amount of "liveblogging", "microblogging" and "twittering" done by Americans compared to Europeans, I was very pleased to discover the effects of it on me, thanks to Micah Sifry on his "Personal Democracy" and "TechPresident". :)
Very well representing such freshness and the openness to networking and sharing of those "New politics" events (compared to the theoretical barricades of some sociological venues), Micah Sifry was kind enough to invite me to the surely exciting event he is organizing in New York City, June 22-23, 2008. A good opportunity to advertise it now: it's called "Rebooting the system" and will include great speakers such as Michael Arrington, Vinton Cerf, Larry Lessig, Tom Steinberg, Patrick Ruffini among the many.
Other notes on the event, the people I met + my presentation coming soon...
This quick post has the goal of introducing one of the most complete and well-produced resources on the pre-history and History of the Internet & the World Wide Web, named here as the "Social Web" (though not properly defined, but mostly broadly associated to "Social Software"). Embedded here are the slides of Trebor Scholtz, available also in article-form, posted on his website Collectivate.net.
Carsonified, a small company based in Bath, England, created this resource while organising the "Future of Web Apps" Event in Miami.
I have been to one of the FOWAExpo events in London, at the Excel Centre. Carsonified was able to attract excellent speakers, "bringing" all of them to the Old Continent.
A large and well-mixed list of contacts across the industry is the secret for the success of such events.
By harvesting from the same list, Carsonified was able to involve 3,000 - among friends and colleagues in the industry - to vote and thus recontruct the list of the ten best Web Applications.
and, finally, a much more "purple" America.
