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YouTube to YouBama

BY Ari Melber | Wednesday, January 30 2008

A new website is talking back to Obama's YouTube video hits. Read More

Obama Doubles Down on YouTube

BY Ari Melber | Sunday, January 27 2008

What do anime, a nude Charlotte Ross and Barack Obama have in common? Read More

Hope Will Not Be Televised: Obama YouTube vs. Clinton Clash

BY Ari Melber | Wednesday, January 23 2008

They won't tell you on TV, but people are watching Obama's new speech. Disintermediation is alive on YouTube. Read More

SNADFU: Obama Campaign Places Nevada Ad in South Carolina

BY Alan Rosenblatt | Tuesday, January 15 2008

Managing placements of online ads can be a challenge, as the Obama campaign recently learned. With more caucuses and primaries approaching, his campaign accidentally placed an ad for Nevada on a South Carolina TV news ... Read More

Trippi: Unplugged in Iowa

BY Ari Melber | Tuesday, January 8 2008

Joe Trippi is one of the few political consultants who speaks frankly, even to the detriment of his clients, and loves democracy even more than he loves politics. I caught up with him for an hour-long conversation about ... Read More

"Swiftboating" themselves into a tizzy: Clinton, Obama, and Novak

BY Morra Aarons-Mele | Saturday, November 17 2007

Do you think Robert Novak is sitting somewhere with Karl Rove, polishing edits to their respective columns, and laughing as Obama and Clinton's campaigns go into overdrive to defend themselves against an alleged piece of ... Read More

Obama "New Hampshire at War" Video

BY Spencer Overton | Wednesday, October 3 2007

Increasingly, new tools are empowering local "amateur" campaign staffers to produce quality content centered around local people. Read More

Facebook Profile Reveals Guiliani's Daughter Supports Obama

BY Colin Delany | Monday, August 6 2007

Or, at least she did until this morning — shortly after a reporter contacted her, she pulled out of the Facebook group "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)." Slate has details; Caroline Giuliani and her ... Read More

ObamaGirl Video Only a Distraction if the Media Makes It One

BY Colin Delany | Monday, June 18 2007

Take a look at Media Matters today for a glimpse of the potential problems with mixing citizen-generated content and our current political culture — how segments of the mainstream media react when they're presented ... Read More

Presidential Parody '08

BY Alan Rosenblatt | Wednesday, March 21 2007

I did a quick search on Google for "President 2008" hoping to find a collection of links to the major candidates. After all, some people think the campaign has already started. But instead of finding Hillary, ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed friday >

For Millennials, Institutions Are Out, Selfies, Social Networks and Diversity Are In

A Pew survey released Friday highlights that young Americans are noticeably detached from traditional institutions such as political parties, organized religion and marriage even as they are increasingly connected with their peers through online social networks. GO

Snowden EU Testimony Renews Calls to Grant Asylum

On Monday, Edward Snowden will participate in his first live discussion before an audience as part of SXSW Interactive through a video conference with his legal advisor Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, as well as digital privacy expert Christopher Soghoian. (Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo from Kansas, also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has asked SXSW to cancel the webcast, The Hill reported). Snowden's discussion will come amidst renewed calls in Europe to grant him asylum. GO

Minnesota Announces Civic Tech Legislation

Can civic innovation be managed statewide? A bill in Minnesota is betting yes. It is looking to grab some of the state's $1.2 billion surplus to fund open data, open government, and civic technology. Openminnesota.org, a site set up to promote and explain the bill, says the following: "Open Minnesota will build an engine for public open data use, civic technology creation engaging start-up companies and technology volunteers, and help hundreds more government units get cost-effectively connected to the best global open government lessons for local adaptation." GO

wednesday >

Now You Can See Who Really Pays NYC Property Taxes

Property tax revenue makes up around a quarter of New York City's budget, but until now broader information about it has not been easily accessible. Users could only look up individual properties by entering lot and block information into a basic online form on a city website, and would have had to cross-reference that information with a building's address and other sources, explained Chris Whong, co-organizer of New York City's Code for America brigade betaNYC. "This data is much more powerful in the aggregate," he said. That's why, as part of last week's Code Across NYC hackathon, he along with several collaborators worked to develop an online platform "born out of curiosity" that maps New York City property data. GO

Facebook's Got A Finger in India's Political Pie

Facebook is an increasingly active political force in India. The company launched their Indian election tracker Tuesday to coincide with the first Facebook Talks Live digital broadcast, “Town Hall” style conversations in which 2014 candidates field questions submitted by Facebook users. These projects build on the get-out-the-vote collaboration between the Times of India and Facebook, which was announced in September.

GO

Civic Crowdfunding Looks to Bigger Projects with Phased Campaigns

Civic crowdfunding dreamed big but started small. The platform Neighbor.ly grabbed attention for a 2012 campaign to help fund a multi-million dollar rail car in Kansas City, but only raised $3,775 of its $10 million goal. The early campaigns of both Neighbor.ly and Citizinvestor that were actually successful reached for modest goals, usually less than $15,000. A look at the campaign pages of either platform today shows larger projects, in the tens or hundreds of thousands, creeping in as well. Civic crowdfunding is growing. To facilitate and attract more large projects Citizinvestor this week announced a plan to crowdfund projects in phases. GO

YanukovychLeaks.org Exposes a Corrupt and Violent Regime

Thousands of documents float and sink in a remote reservoir not far from a grand 345-acre estate contained within a sprawling wrought iron fence. As evocative as it may seem, this not the beginning of a spy thriller, but of Yanukovych Leaks, an online portal where the leaks have been uploaded by investigative journalists who say the extravagance detailed in those papers may prove ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's depth of corruption. GO

tuesday >

Surveillance in the Overlooked Corners of Africa

In the video below, filmed during the Oslo Freedom Forum in May 2013, Jacob Appelbaum breaks it to Rafael Marques, an Angolan investigative journalist and anti-corruption activist, that his laptop is being surveilled through a crude backdoor in spite of the fact that he is using Tor. He opens up a file where they can see all the images that have been stored and are waiting to be collected by the hackers. Appelbaum tells an understandably concerned Marques: “Every computer that's targeted is compromisable,”

GO

monday >

How To Follow… The Crisis in Ukraine (Updated)

The EuroMaidan Revolution has passed the 100 day mark and Russian forces have taken control of parts of Crimea. The New York Times described the escalating conflict between Russia and the West as “reminiscent of low points in the Cold War.” The Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said that “we are on the brink of disaster.”

GO

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