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The Europe roundup: The resigned President and the power of social media

BY Antonella Napolitano | Wednesday, June 9 2010

Did you attend Personal Democracy Forum 2010?
Check Nancy Scola's recap of some of the sessions and what other attendants wrote about the conference.
And we will give you information about PDF Europe conference very soon!

  • Germany | The resigned President and the power of social media
    Last week Horst Köhler resigned as Federal President of Germany after some comments on the German peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. As reported by Spiegel online:

    The president had become the target of intense criticism following remarks he made during a surprise visit to soldiers of the Bundeswehr German army in Afghanistan on May 22. In an interview with a German radio reporter who accompanied him on the trip, he seemed to justify his country's military missions abroad with the need to protect economic interests.

    "A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that ... military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests -- for example when it comes to trade routes, for example when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes," Köhler said.

    But it wasn't the radio interview to lead to his resignation. PEP-NET founder Rolf Luhers explain how German social media played a role in that. He reports in fact that the first to pick up Köhler’s  remarks was a fairly unknown blog called unpolitik.de. Other bloggers followed but none of these posts made it to the mainstream media (a detailed roundup in German can be read on carta.info ).

    People also asked for reactions on twitter and other social networks: "After Deutschlandradio broadcasted an interview with the Christian Democrat Ruprecht Polenz on May 27th, who said that Köhler expressed himself imprecisely, the media storm slowly gained momentum. A very critical report that appeared in Germany’s biggest news magazine “Der Spiegel” might finally have pushed Köhler over the edge" says Luehrs.

    Though the presidency is a ceremonial role, the search for a replacement was a test for Prime Minister  Ms Merkel, who was already fighting to keep her coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats on side. Social media had a say in this process as well: first of all they helped reviving a 2009 campaign against Minister Ursula von der Leyen, the favourite for that position, and known in the blogosphere for a net censorship bill. Then they helped pusching the candidacy of Joachim Gauck, proposed by the opposition of social democrats and greens:

    Folks started different kinds of social media campaigns. Examples are a website showing a picture made of avatars of twitter users who tweeted the hashtag #mygauck and different types of online petitions (1,2). Meanwhile the hashtag #mygauck already made it to the top of the most used German twitter tags today.
    It remains an open question whether all this will have any influence on the election results, but it clearly shows that social media have become politically relevant in Germany.

  • EU | Stories from PDF 2010: let's sit in circles and learn
    Wired Italy has a piece on PDF 2010 written by Linnea Passaler, a doctor and also the founder of Pazienti.org, a health care website that gathers stories from patients in order to create a public database (we covered the launch of the project last month).
    Passaler tries to explain what she learned and make comparisons with her own country, suggesting that maybe some ideas may be applied and change the scenario of political campaigns: that's the case of the proposal of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Their paper Reform in an Age of Networked Campaigns proposed a public funding of candidates proportional to the donations they received from citizens - a revolutionary proposal for many European countries, where campaigns are totally funded by the government (causing many cases of corruption).
    Passaler was also particularly striked by the Open Government Initiative and its philosophy of openness, transparency and collaboration: "Transparency is the new objectivity and this may lead to a society with more freedom and opportunities". Finally she invites readers to do what she did at PDF BootCamp: "Let's sit in circles and share our curiosity and passions". Looking forward to next PDF Europe conference?
  • EU | Tools for European political organising
    PDF writer and speaker Jon Worth was at PDF2010 and made a list of tools that might work in the future for political organization back in Europe. In particular, he liked go.usa.gov, in his words: "a US government link shortener, style of bit.ly but with trust and reliability for government URLs. How about a similar one for UK, FR, EU twitter use? The original code is open source and the system is based on Drupal.". Check his list, see if you find anything interesting... and make it work!
  • UK | The programme is online: have your say!
    British coalition government built the online version of their programme for government. Every part of the programme is commentable until the end of June 10th.

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

PD+ This Thurs 1pm: Thriving Online With Howard Rheingold

I'm really looking forward to talking with author Howard Rheingold this Thursday on the next PD+ teleconference. His new book, Net Smart, is a concise and thoughtful guide to understanding and making the most of the hyper-networked, always-on, firehose of information and distraction that is the contemporary experience of anyone who uses ... GO

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

GO

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