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Letting the Audience Talk Back to the Candidates: What You Missed At Last Saturday's Presidential Debate [UPDATED]

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, December 15 2011

As you settle in to watch tonight's episode of "Survivor: Republican Presidential Candidate Edition," which will be airing on Fox News at 9pm with the quaint-sounding title, "Iowa Debate," it's worth taking a look at one feature of last Saturday's episode of the series that didn't get much attention. That program, which was aired on ABC News, included an interactive real-time feedback feature produced by Yahoo News that -- for the first time, ever -- not only invited viewers to respond to the show while it was underway, but managed to push a smidgen of that audience feedback back into the live program, where it potentially could have influenced the conversation. That is, the people who used to be called the audience were actually given a chance to talk back to a television show, by the show itself. Read More

Presidential Debates 2.0: It's Not Too Late to Open Up the Process

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, September 14 2011

Next week, on September 22nd, Fox News is teaming up with Google/YouTube to present a different kind of presidential debate. Or is it? Read More

10Questions.com: Video Answers Can be Fun

BY Daniel Teweles | Wednesday, October 20 2010

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Jan Brewer finds her voice after, well... losing it: Now that candidates across the country have answered their constituents' crowdsourced questions via video on 10Questions, I've taken a ... Read More

10Questions.com: Now You Decide If They've Really Answered Your Questions

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, October 19 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum We're entering the final stretch of 10Questions.com, where the public gets to evaluate the answers posted by participating candidates and vote on whether they've ... Read More

10Questions.com and the Wisdom of Crowds

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, October 19 2010

10Questions.com is a project of Personal Democracy Forum. When a Georgia pediatrician felt that critical child health issues were missing from the gubernatorial debate in his state, he posed a question for the men hoping ... Read More

10Questions Update: Candidate Video Answers are Streaming In

BY Daniel Teweles | Friday, October 15 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum You asked, and the candidates have answered. Video answers from 9 candidates are now live on 10Questions.com. So surf on over and check them out. Then vote. ... Read More

10Questions: New Candidate Confirmations and Videos!

BY Daniel Teweles | Monday, October 11 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum With less than a month until to go until Election Day, campaigns across the country are busy enticing voters, and now, rounding up tech-savvy interns, new media ... Read More

10Questions: Phase 1's End; A Preliminary Analysis

BY Daniel Teweles | Monday, October 11 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum The first phase of 10Questions recently came to an end. Questions for candidates and votes on which questions the candidates should answer are no longer being ... Read More

Some candidates "don't have time" for constituent questions

BY Daniel Teweles | Friday, October 1 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum 10Questions is an experiment, and as such, different campaigns have different perceptions of the value added provided by directly answering questions submitted by and ... Read More

10Questions.com: A Questionnaire This Ain't

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, September 28 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum As campaigns begin to get back to us about participating in the 10Questions project, I've noticed something: The idea of what we're doing is so new that some campaigns ... Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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