Tactic: Why Don’t Chilean Parties Use Web Tools?

Written by Jorge Jorquera on May 3, 2008 – 2:55 pm -

striaticDescription: Last week El Mercurio (one of the oldest newspapers in Chile) published a report about the use of Web technologies by political parties in the country (original source in Spanish). The article stated that what the parties were using was very very basic and lacks the “social” element. Even though each one of these parties have a website (list here), they don’t apply the latest interactive Web 2.0 technologies.

Organizer: The political parties of Chile

Purpose of Action: To win elections and gain voter support

Organizing tools not used: YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, or blogging

Outcome: The impact of this new situation is uncertain, but if access to the Internet increases and the activities of young voters online continue to increase, we will see a very different electional process in 2009. The fewer the number of parties that understand this, the lower the probability that they will understand the phenomenon of “Politics 2.0″ that is consolidating around the world and may produce very deep changes in the way we understand “Government”.

Ease of Replication: If we look at the political campaigns in the US, and search a bit about the use of this tools, we can see that, for example, Obama has more than 800,000 followers in Facebook and Ms. Clinton has 150,000. In the past presidential elections in France, the Internet was not only important in the campaigns (in fact Nicolas Sarkozy opposed using it to debate with other candidates), but also it allowed to spread the news who was the winner, due to the bloggers who had fresh info that the media couldn’t get at the same time.

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Posted in Americas, Blogs, Social Networks, Tactics, Video | 2 Comments »

Tactic: Gazans Phone-Bank for Obama Online

Written by Mary on April 23, 2008 – 2:48 pm -

Description: Palestinian youth are using the Internet to run an informal phone bank to call voters in the US before every primary in order to convince them to vote for Barack Obama. (see video)

Organizer: Ibrahim Abu Jayab and 17 of his friends (Gaza, Palestine)

Purpose of Action: To convince American voters to elect Obama as president. Ibrahim believe that an Obama presidency would have a positive effect on the Middle East peace process.

Organizing Tools: Internet telephony

Outcome: We have yet to see whether Obama will win the election.

Ease of Replication: Internet telephony services, like Skype, are great because you can make calls internationally while paying local rates for calling cell phones and land lines. If you are speaking computer-to-computer (using a head set) you can talk for free.

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Posted in Americas, Internet Telephony, Mid-East & N. Africa | No Comments »