For 2013 Elections, Kenyans Have Multiple Online Platforms
BY Julia Wetherell | Thursday, January 17 2013
With fraud and disorganization plaguing the lead-up to the Kenyan elections on March 4, new web portals have launched to give voters a platform for election information, as well as for reporting and tracking corruption, as Aljazeera reported yesterday. Read More
Twitter Users Call Out Fraudulent Voter Registration in Kenya
BY Julia Wetherell | Tuesday, January 8 2013
Voter registration fraud in Kenya has been brought to the fore by Twitter users in the country, who are taking issue with political parties illegally inflating the number of their supporters. Read More
Israeli Transparency NGO Shows Voters How to Cast Informed Ballots
BY Lisa Goldman | Thursday, January 3 2013
As Israelis prepare to cast their ballots in national elections on January 22, the country's only transparency NGO has launched a campaign to encourage voters to educate themselves by consulting their Open Knesset website, where they can find previously unavailable information about how their legislators are doing their jobs and whether they are representing their constituents as they would wish to be represented. Read More
No Capslock Allowed: Ecuador Has Online Conduct Code for Election Banter
BY Julia Wetherell | Tuesday, December 18 2012
Screengrab of the National Electoral Council's election portal, Voto transparente, Conoce a Tu Candidato
Ecuador is gearing up for national elections in February with an online portal aimed at giving voters transparency in their process of choosing a candidate, and 14 guidelines for good behavior online. Read More
In Japanese Social Media, No Political Opinions During Election Cycle
BY Julia Wetherell | Monday, December 17 2012
As the Japanese general election came to a close yesterday, with the Liberal Democratic Party returning to control of the Diet in a landslide victory against the Democratic Party of Japan, it’s worth noting that the nation’s electorate made their choice without being allowed to express political opinions on social media. Read More
In Canada, Online Campaign to Protest Gov't's Digital 'Snooping Bill' Turns Nasty
BY Elisabeth Fraser | Wednesday, December 5 2012
In Canada the issue of online privacy has become contentious, with experts, law enforcement officials, and legislators sharply divided. Bill C-30, formally called the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, was tabled in the House of Commons in February. The bill proposes expanding police powers so that telecoms and Internet Service Providers would be required to turn over subscriber data without a warrant. The opposition responded with a furious online campaign that took a bizarre turn into the realm of personal attacks. Read More
In Georgia's Troubled Border Region, Text Messaging is Fostering Community Safety
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, August 28 2012
On the troubled northern border of Georgia, next to the disputed territory of South Ossetia, where two wars have been fought in the last two decades, an NGO has been quietly pioneering a new kind of distributed reporting system, one that uses SMS text messaging and the web to combine the data-rich mapping of Ushahidi with the meticulous requirements of human-rights researchers. In a region where few people have internet access, they've come up with an ingenious solution for data gathering via text. Read More
How the German Pirate Party's "Liquid Democracy" Works
BY David Meyer | Monday, May 7 2012
In the midst of the political upheaval affecting Europe, a relatively new movement is making stunning progress, particularly in Germany. On Sunday, the Pirate Party entered its third German state parliament in eight months, demonstrating momentum that surprises even its core members. The party is now on track to pick up a double-digit percentage of the vote in next year's federal elections. And it's dealing with this explosive growth through the medium it knows best: technology. Read More