“Rebooting democracy”
Thanks to a heads-up from Tim at Tree of Knowledge, I found out about this conference, the Personal democracy Forum, being held in New York City this month. Looks like they’ll be discussing some issues that have preoccupied us here at Gatewatching - the influence of new technologies on political campaigning and debate.
The debate in this area doesn’t just happen on Gatewatching 
The conference’s tagline is “technology is changing politics”, but Charlie Beckett (who heads up the LSE’s Polis Centre where Tim is studying) has posed the following tough questions that he’d like the conference to answer:
1. Tell me in concrete terms what the new technology has allowed you to do that is significantly different in political terms from before? Not just being faster, more connected, more responsive. Tell me what difference it has made, if any, in policy outcomes and the distribution of power?
2. Is this just an American thing? Is it because US politics was so sterile, so locked up by lobbyists and big money and ideological stasis? or can new technology unleash new democratic forces in other countries?
I’d add another - could you make a realistic comparison of the current impacts of online campaigning methods and traditional broadcast media? One of the big speakers at the conference, Clay Shirky, has said some pretty silly things lately about the place of television in our culture - I would hope that the conference would proceed with a recognition that broadcast media are still the principal information source for most voters. That’s not being cynical, just conceding that there is a long way to go, and lots of work to do, in making online engagement more generally available and effective.
Sadly I won’t be able to go - I’ll be preparing for something new (more on that later), but Tim says he’ll be liveblogging the conference (presumably over at TOK), so that’s something to look forward to.
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