Democracia YouTube

Hoy es el debate CNN/ Youtube entre los demócratas Clinton y Obama en el cual los ciudadanos son los que hacen las preguntas directamente, sin filtros ni intermediarios. Como dice Joe Trippi, el experto electoral hoy a cargo de la campaña de Edwards: la democracia está renaciendo, digitalmente. Aquí las razones de Jeff Jarvis sobre la importancia del debate, un video invitación a participar y una columna de Trippi sobre el fenómeno.


"The YouTube debates could fundamentally change the dynamics of politics in America, giving a voice to the people, letting us be heard by the powerful and the public, enabling us to coalesce around our interests and needs, and even teaching reporters who are supposed to ask questions in our stead how they should really do it.

The debates could also demonstrate that democracy is in good hands, that we care, we are smart, we are informed. Too often, that’s not the PR we, the people, get. We’re masses who don’t know and don’t give a damn. But that’s not the people you see in the vast majority of YouTube’s 2,000-plus debate questions.

Finally, the debates could begin to change the relationship between candidates and voters. Campaigns always have been and still are all about control, about handing down a message, about the appearance of listening. The wise candidates should go into those 2,000 questions and start answering the toughest ones, whether or not they’re asked on CNN; that will earn our respect." Jeff Jarvis.-






From The Sunday Times
June 10, 2007
Democracy reborn, digitally
The tools of democracy are being reforged and people are being put back into the process
Joe Trippi

On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are demanding more and more from their governments: the best education and healthcare, a sensible foreign policy, a plan to combat global warming, reductions in poverty. But at the same time, we are losing faith that government can fulfil our hopes. Citizens feel increasingly disconnected, asking: “Why should we bother?” Democracy requires the participation of the people, and it is floundering.

Technology has generated a new means for citizens to reconnect. This is a revolution of a different sort – a digital reawakening of democracy – a gradual transformation that requires no act of parliament, or constitutional amendment. Politics is not changing; the tools of democracy are being reforged. People are being put back into the process.

In the US, the shift began during Senator John McCain’s first campaign for president in 2000, but his efforts did not gain much traction. McCain dedicated resources to the internet and understood its potential, but the technology was immature. Access to broadband at home was rare; there were virtually no blogs; social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo – now hugely influential – did not exist; and people hesitated to use their credit card online.

As campaign manager for Governor Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run, I had many more resources than McCain had four years earlier. By then, there were 1.4m blogs; people tended to trust online credit card security; and many more homes and offices had high-speed internet access.

We organised 600,000 activists on our website and blog, and we enabled this community to shape the campaign in every way. Organised on the website Meetup.com, nearly 200,000 Dean supporters met regularly in coffee shops, bars and town halls – a practice once entrenched in American culture yet mostly absent for generations.

Our community discussed local strategy on blogs and in message boards. When faced with the decision to leave the federal financing system, we asked our community, not our consultants, to vote on it (the result was overwhelmingly in favour).

By leveraging technology, we gave the campaign to our supporters. We opened the political system, empowered grassroots activists and raised money through small contributions, not from special interests or corporate donors. As I wrote in my book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the candidate may have lost, but the campaign won. This “first shot” was the start of something promising for the future of American and British democracy.

With each year, we have a new set of tools to strengthen democracy and empower citizens.

The phenomenal growth of social networking sites, for example, has made this easier. These sites provide a ready-made template for users to create their own profile and share it with friends, work colleagues, neighbours and acquaintances. It encourages people to join campaigns and causes, plan parties, invite friends and share interests – all forms of interaction that campaigns are leveraging.

Similar to blogs, video-sharing allows citizens to record their own content and distribute it. In the United States last year, we saw the first “YouTube election”. Senator George Allen’s campaign was destroyed, in part, by a YouTube video of his remark at a campaign rally that many considered racist.

Britain now lags behind the United States in using technology in campaigns, but the integration of technology is spreading. Indeed, Tony Blair’s recent appearances on YouTube and David Cameron’s Webcameron are recent examples.

On Wednesday, Bebo will host a seminar in the House of Commons to discuss this development, which I will be speaking at. Bebo is creating a new facility to allow its users (including three MPs) to create special “good cause” websites to coordinate projects.

Democratic tools are evolving in other countries in different ways. The use of mobile texting is exploding in much of the developing world. Nigeria, for example, has only 1.25m landline phones, but more than 30m mobile subscribers. Political campaigns in the developing world will increasingly exploit mobile “networks” to distribute messages and allow citizens to spread messages to friends and family.

As people reconnect, politics will change globally. It is only a matter of time. As the process is given back to the people, as networks are empowered, self-government will reawaken.

It is an exciting prospect: billions of people worldwide directly connecting through technology to make their country and their world a better place. A million people – if they can connect and organise – will always be more powerful than the biggest corporation. A massive online network of concerned activists will always have more of an impact than a surge of television ads.

If Britain wants to hasten this reawakening, its citizens must realize the internet’s true potential. It is not just a cash machine for political campaigns or another channel for a press office. The internet is an empowerment tool for the people. It comes with risks – operatives must cede some control to their communities. But the results could be overwhelmingly positive – both for campaigns and for Britain’s democratic future.

Joe Trippi is a political consultant based in St Michaels, Maryland. He is currently a senior adviser to Senator John Edwards’s campaign for the presidency