obama's next steps

On November 4, 2008 the United States America witnessed history being made with one man representing it all, Barack Obama. Obama became the first African American to be elected into office and now our president. While he is the face of history there is no way he could have done it without his supporters. Obama began at the bottom with grassroots movements and worked his way up to the top with national fame and support, even international support. He admits it in his speeches and confirms that that is the way he wanted it. So what does his movement have in common with Wikipedia? What can Obama learn from Wikipedia?
I find Obama’s movement similar to Wikipedia in the way that they both start at the bottom. Wikipedia consists of the consumers adding and editing the information in a fashion that is easier for us to understand and access. As the consumers, we voice what we want and incorporate what we find that is needed. I think that this is why Obama is so successful, because he did not run things, he put the power in the hands of the people for them do and say what they wanted to hear. Who knows what we want to hear than ourselves?
I do think however that there is still a lot of untapped potential in regards to incorporating technology and per say the Commander in Chief. While pictures and videos were recorded from cameras and camera phones and were quickly and efficiently played on line and the news, how can we advance this even more and what does Obama not realize? Well, first of all, his every move will be recorded. Whether it is people seeing him and taking a picture with a camera phone or the paparazzi, it will be incredibly hard for him to not be top news everyday. This can be positive if he is doing well and the country approves of him, however one mistake and you can bet it will be caught on tape and he will be scrutinized for it. I also think that all of this technology along with the ideas of his movement, we can convert this nation into more of democracy. I wonder that why is it only us that are watching Obama; is there any way we could communicate with him and express our idea and concerns? Because of the movements he has lead I think it would be completely appropriate to have this kind of relationship with him where we can continue to tell him what we want and what is best for us. An idea for this would be “mini campaigning”. If Obama and his cabinet can find options to solutions to for example health care, then they can present them to the country as if they were “candidates” and have us vote and decide. Running these mini campaigns on the issues that matter and having everyone’s voice in the decision and policy making in the country. This would once again be ran similar to his campaign in order to maintain this grassroots ideology.

Obama for the People

Ok. So Wikipedia is pretty much ran by the viewers. People can go into the website and look up pretty much anything and can be publicly edited by adding additional information about the topic as you please. This shows that the internet an important source because people use it to gain information, some that’s created be the users themselves. Obama and his campaign recognized that the Internet is important and a good tool to use for their campaign.

To show people that they are important to Obama by opening up blogs so the people can be heard, use of social networking between Obama and the people. This shows the people that Obama cares and wants you to be heard. The people can put their own messages, strategies, and other topics that are important to them. In this case everyone that the campaign concerns (the presidential candidate and the citizens of the U.S) are all participating to make change. Also on the Obama website you can enter your phone number to get updates and other info on Obama and the campaign.

Another form of participatory culture for when had one of Obama’s debates. He let the people who were there to ask questions and talk to Obama about issues the people wanted to talk about. This shows again that the people are number 1 in Obama’s mind. He could of just talked about what he wanted to, but he took the time to step back and let the people take over and share their interest. This again shows Obama is more worried about the people and not just himself.

The Obama campaign with the use of the Internet was to their advantage to get the people more involved, heard, feel more important, and show that their voice did matter to Obama.

The Hush Sound

Okay, so this is sort of random, but I saw OneRepublic in concert over the weekend and The Hush Sound was one of their opening bands. They performed a song called "We Believe in Barack Obama," and I thought it was so catchy and amusing. Click the photo to check out a snippet of them performing the song.

ideas and terms to review for the exam

kids and media

social networking

remix

Meet up

Joe Trippi

2.0 political campaign and viral media

Convergence Culture (the book) and how it is manifest in different culture industries

The Long Tail

Participatory journalism

Journalism and blogging

Indymedia

Wikipedia

Participatory panopticon

Sousveillance

“Free” by Chris Anderson

Wiki-bama

I apologize for putting this up so late, but I found a great article by 'WebProfits' that I think pretty well sums up the success of Barck Obama's campaign. This article lists 6 things that Barack Obama’s "online marketing strategy" did right.

1.) On your first visit to his website, you were immediately asked to join his mailing list. 2.) Every webpage encourages donations. 3.) The "information architecture" is excellent - the website is well laid out and easy to navigate. 4.) Blogs are used to communicate messages 5.) He used to social networking to maximize his exposure 6.) He tapped into mobile marketing.

Similarly, is all about encouraging people to participate. Wikipedia "is an ongoing work to which, in principle, anybody can contribute." Every webpage encourages contributions, whether it be new information or edits of existing info. Wikipedia also has excellent information architecture, and involves people in community discussion.

Barack Obama really paved the way in new campaign tactics when he became the "social networking king." He used the internet to reach out to all people...just like Wikipedia: "Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute...this means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles." This is exaclty what we covered in class: the difference between expertise and collective intelligence.

Barack Obama even created the Citizen Strategy Think Tank, which invites people to "Help Barack Obama craft the messages and strategy that will make him the 44th President of the United States." How incredible that we live in a time where we can not only write encyclopedia articles, but also give our personal feedback to the president.

"It will take your time, your energy, and your advice - to push us forward when we're doing right, and to let us know when we're not." - Barack Obama, Feb 10th, 2007

Obama and Wikipedia

As many people have said in their posts the main similarity between Obama and Wikipedia is that both of their success depends on individuals.  These individuals are not elitist scholars or professional politicians or campaign managers.  They are everyday people, and they take it upon themselves to provide and give whatever they can.  Both Wikipedia and Obama's campaign relies on people feeling that they have some power, that they can make a difference no matter how small.  Both also must trust the "volunteers" to provide correct information and other's who use it to check and fix anything that shouldn't be there.  Here is an example of this, it's a screen shot of Obama's wikipedia page on September 23rd at 10:14 PST.  It was removed by 10:39 the same day (be warned there is some derogatory and just plain rude language used).  It took just 25 minutes for this to be edited away, a sign of how those participating online are peer censoring sites like Wikipedia.  Obama's campaign had volunteers checking each other as well, to make sure data was accurate and the campaign continued the way it was planned.

I thought this blog post from the New York Times explained a lot about how the Internet and every other new technology is changing politics.  The Internet allowed for Obama to organize thousands of people for all different purposes.  Advertisements on YouTube which may in the years before have been missed because they were on the far end of the long tail, became Obama's greatest advantage in the media.  "Those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them... The campaign's official stuff they created for You TUbe was watched for 14.5 million hours.  To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million" (Miller).  This is a great example of not only the effect of the long tail, but also convergence.  Political ads on television are no longer effective alone, they show up on YouTube along with the hundreds of others that are shown for free.

Obama.

Barrack Obama is president of the United States. Wow. How did he manage to do this? Its all about getting your name out there, getting people to talk about you, getting people to interact with you. America needs a president that can speak to the people that can relate to the people. Barrack Obama is this man. He knows how to attract people. Ever since he started the campaign trail he knew how to get in touch with the people of today. Barrack used text messaging to get people news, and get people to pass information on. This was a great idea; everyone today owns a mobile phone, and texts. Right there he is converging with the people, getting people to work together and change the times. David Talbot talks about how Obama’s campaign has caught up with the technology age we live in today. Obama has social networking sites; you can organize house parties, and get other Obama supporters to come and converse. To me that is awesome.

The Obama campaign like Wikipedia started from the ground up. The both started from nothing, and with the support of other people, and the contributions people brang to the table, made it into what it is today. The both only exist because of the tones of support they receive from whoever wants to contribute. Without the collective intelligence of individuals they would not have succeeded.

So I now leave you with this. The presidential address was no doubt history in the making, It was heart felt. It was sincere and genuine. Most importantly it left me with a feeling of Hope. Hope for our future, and our kids’ future. So hold your head up high, because today is a new day, and tomorrow don’t look too bad either.

Comparing Obama and Wikipedia

When we look back at the historic presidential campaign of Barack Obama, one aspect that sticks out was his ability to network. After watching the news for the past few days after the election, many stations are complimenting Obama’s campaign team, including the general public that volunteered to help him out. There was a lot of social networking on both the internet and in real life. Obama had roughly 1.5 million American volunteers doing everything from door-to-door campaigning to calling cell phones. The relationship between Obama’s campaign and Wikipedia is the voluntary services. The idea that both parties, Obama and Wikipedia, would be unsuccessful if it wasn’t for the help of the general public is true in this sense.

Wikipedia slowly grows, by roughly 7% a year, because of its volunteers. Members of the website have the ability to create new entries as well as edit existing ones. If it wasn’t for the enthusiasm of the Wikipedia volunteers to take pride in what they do by helping maintain a very popular online referencing website.

The Obama page on Wikipedia was updated the day after elections. I remember looking at it on Tuesday just to see what it had to say about Obama and they had already written him in as President-Elect Obama. He has quite a page with a lot of his history on it. The volunteers that made this page are a good example of the relationship between Obama and Wikipedia. As far as we know, the page could have been created by someone from Obama’s campaign, again reiterating the public’s enthusiasm of both working for Obama and Wikipedia.

The recent and fast growing birth of Web 2.0 has really opened the doors for all types of people and businesses. The ability to socially network millions of people through the use of one webpage can help spread the word for any situation. Whether it is a presidential campaign or just a simple advertisement for a company, Web 2.0 helps everyone out. Obama was smart about taking advantage of the internet by spreading the word of his campaign, using blogs to get people talking and interested, and many websites that encouraged people to vote by setting up easy to use voter registration techniques. For the 21 months that he campaigned, starting in Feb. 2007, Obama networked as much as he possibly could. Once again, the volunteering of the public to help create something shows great success if we look at Wikipedia and Obama’s campaign.

Obama and Wikipedia

When thinking about the Obama campaign, the first thing that stood out to me is that the people played perhaps the largest role. By people, of course, I refer to the general population, his supporters. Unlike virtually every other campaign in history, Obama's grassroots campaign was run much like wikipedia is run: by the community. Without the community, Wikipedia would have virtually none of its entries, it would be unnoticed and unappreciated, and probably wouldn't be even thought about today.

Obama's campaign relied on its community to fund it, as well as spread its message. Through the small, though numerous donations, Obama really didn't have to worry about the cost. Additionally, a large part of the campaign was done by the community itself, which is of course, free. The ability to utilize youtube, blogs, internet news sites, social networks, and the rest that web 2.0 has to offer revolutionized Obama's campaign.

In response to the second question, I believe that Obama can use sites like Myspace and Facebook, blogs, youtube, and the like to hear the voice of the people. Listening to the people and identifying with them is one of the things that helped Obama the most this election. If he can use these tools to get a grasp of the public's opinion, I think he can really help the public shape the country. Additionally Obama can use these tools to reach the public as well. In an age that is growing further away from the TV set and newspapers, the traditional media of the past, the internet will arguably be Obama's greatest tool during his term.

Obama and Wikipedia: The Connection

What does Wikipedia have in common with the Obama Campaign?
Wikipedia, like the Obama Campaign, really portrays themselves as being ‘for the people’. They are different from anything else out there, they are innovative and the focus is involving people.

I think that really made Obama successful was how he focused on involving the people. He managed to raise the most money of any Presidential candidate by appealing to the people instead of large contributors. In turn, he received donations from all across the United States.

Likewise, instead of relying on a few “scholars”, Wikipedia has opened its doors to anyone and everyone. By lifting the restriction of who can and cannot participate, Wikipedia has created a new type of intelligence – a collective intelligence that relies on every day people to pool what they know together and in doing so, they spread the information to countless others.

What can we draw from the material we've been studying in class that could help Obama as he moves forward with his goal of building a participatory USA?
I think Obama’s campaign had it right the first time – it’s all about the people. In order to get the people involved, he needs to meet them on their level.

His original campaign was brilliant. He (and his campaign) really focused on bringing in the interest of those who felt like they did not have a voice - mainly, today's youth, to the forefront. By putting himself on popular sites like MySpace and Facebook, he got his message out there. He started a completely new way of running a campaign.

I think if he continues to use the internet and new media and new technology that might not have been available in the past, then he will be able to keep his finger on the pulse of the United States – and in essence, what the people want.

Wikipedia and Obama

Both Wikipedia and the Obama campaign use forms of participatory media and collective intelligence. Wikipedia needs people to participate and pool together their knowledge in order for the site to continue expanding. Something similar could be said of the Obama campaign. One form of participatory media the Obama campaign used was the debate that was set up similar to a town hall meeting. People were able to ask questions, make comments, and interact with Obama. It was more like a two way street. Instead of Obama just coming on stage and speaking, he was taking time to address their concerns. Another way the Obama campaign used participatory media was his blog. Not only could you read his "presidential campaign diary", but you could connect with others who are pro Obama in your community, donate, read articles and videos from his campaign trail, and comment. The Obama campaign relied heavly on donations from supporters, much like Wikipedia relies on people to continue adding information.

I think it would really help Obama to attain his goal of building a participatory USA if he continued to use the internet as a way to inform people about issues and bills going through his office. This way people can engage with each other through blogging and social networking sites. Maybe some of the responses on those issues and bills would get back to him and he could make a more informed decision on how the American people would react to them.

Obama Obama Obama

When you are running for president or any kind of political office, there is some basic information that any informed citizen should know. Like the candidates background, their stance on certain issues, and how to get involved in that particular candidates campaign just to name a few. The Obama campaign recognized the importance of the Internet and new media technologies and put them at the center of their campaign, by using the Internet to converge all of these topics on to their web site . Which in convergence culture everyone is a participant and in turn participation shapes our culture. Not only can you get background information on Obama, his running mate, and their family’s. You can also get information on their stance on specific issues and compare it to McCain’s stance. You can search for information by group like small business owner, environmentalists, and students or you can search by state. You can also sign up to receive texts updating you on the campaign or what I thought was really cool, pick out an Obama ring tone, there’s 12 to choose from.

Wikipedia is also in a scene like the Obama campaign. Wikipedia was built and is still run by a very large community of volunteers, who research, write, and police the web site. These volunteers, which could also be viewed as a form of participatory culture, use's collective intelligence, the idea that everyone knows a little bit about about a certain subject and pool's this knowledge together, to write and publish an entry. Volunteers in general play a major role in the growth and up keep of Wikipedia and with out them Wikipedia would not thrive as it is today.

 

The Obama campaign was run by volunteers or in a sense a different form of participatory culture and I do believe without this participator culture the Obama campaign could not have won this election. Volunteers played a vital role from going door to door, calling people, organizing rallies, passing out flyers, selling T-shirts, etc. His Campaign also shattered the record for the amount raised by a candidate running for office. Simply just by having people go to his web site and donating 5$. The Obama campaign also use's blogs and social networking sites as a form of collective intelligence. They use these sites to pool together knowledge like this unofficial think tank for not only his campaign but also his presidency. A think tank could also be thought of as an area/type of collective intelligence that keeps the campaign at a grassroots level and to also make it easier for the general public to voice there opinions or solutions bout certain issues. The use social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Flickr just to name a few to gather together this type of collective intelligence to see what issues are important to a specific demographic.

For Tuesday

For Tuesday I'd like you each to write a post addressing the following questions:

What does wikipedia have in common with the Obama Campaign?

What can we draw from the the material we've been studying in class that could help Obama as he moves forward with his goal of building a participatory USA?

Please think back on the various concepts we have gone over in class including--participatory media, collective intelligence, the long tail, convergence, creative commons, horizontal organization, social networking and so on. I also strongly encourage you to read this great piece on the Obama campaign's social networking strategy for ideas and insight for this assignment. And please take care in writing your post--include links, proof read, and make it interesting for us all to read. And finally please read all of the posts and write thoughtful paragraph-long comments on at least 3.

Due up on the blog by Monday evening at the very latest!

My Election Day 2008

Yes, this was my first time voting and happy with my vote and the results of Election Day. I had a funny story because I registered to vote last year. Turned out I was never registered, what a joke. It was a good thing I went to the Denver Elections Building on Mexico because I could not remember what address I gave them when I registered. But everything turned out well and I voted at Halls which was convenient. I feel like an adult now and I was very excited that I was able to vote and let my voice be heard. Most of my friends i live with got there information and news from mainstream news and websites. Nobody I know really of information on non mainstream sites.

My Election Day

For Election Day a couple friends and me went snowboarding. We all had voted early, so decided to take the day off. I thought it would be pretty cool to get your mind away from all the election coverage, and then come back to civilization, and jump right back into it. So while snowboarding, we saw an Obama bus. This was some woman’s bus that was gathering people to take them to vote, and then bring them back at the end of the day. I had the chance to speak with her, and she was very stoked on life, and was almost certain Obama was going to win. There where people wearing Obama shirts, and stickers, and I have to say the whole day I didn’t see anyone with a McCain pin/ sticker. Alright, so the entire day we were oblivious to how the election was turning out. We got back into Denver around 8, and met up with some people at the bar to watch the election, and celebrate history. In the bar they had two different news channels on. CNN and FOX. However they where only playing the sound from the CNN channel. All in all it was pretty interesting, they had that giant map, and would focus in on states to see what counties were going in what direction. I though that was pretty cool. The night then got a little hazy after Obama won. The next day I spoke to my mother, because she is up in Canada. She said that everyone is Canada was excited about the election, they where even celebrating up there. I though this was interesting, because knowing Canada, they don’t really like the United States, so maybe this will all change. Who knows? So there you have it, my Election Day experience. To add a quick note, South Park did a really funny episode about Obama and McCain. I don’t want to write about it, in case you didn’t see it, but be sure to watch it.

Election Day!!

Election Day was awesome. This was my first time being able to vote, as I'm sure this was the first time for many of you guys as well. I turned the TV on for some news and looked at CNN as the primary news. Most of the people that I talked to got their news from mainstream news sites and television, there wasn't really anyone who looked for this information on indie sites. One person particularly was looking at one of those government sites that had information about all of the amendments that were on the ballot. I don't remember exactly what site it was but I looked at it too because it was helpful in regard to what the amendments really were.

I know that a lot of people voted early and said that they preferred it that way just in case there were long lines and most people had work. People also said it was simply convenient to vote earlier. I voted at a high school near my house with a friend. Wooo!

Then, later that night we were watching the special with John Stewart and Steven Colbert, and I think that John Stewart said something like, as of 11 o'clock eastern time, Barack Obama has been elected president. I turned to CNN right away (just to make sure) and saw that Barack Obama was the new president! It was pretty cool to watch videos of people around the country be so excited. I hope this time, we can have a president that the majority of the country doens't hate and that legitimate change can start happening when Obama starts his term.

election reflection

During the entire day of the election, I could not focus! I was unable to do homework or even sit still as I was too anxious and excited. After sitting in the library for forty minutes pretending to do homework (really on Facebook) I left to go vote. I had received my mail in ballot a couple days earlier but filled it out finally and walked over to the polls with a friend. I found that many other people I knew had also requested a mail in ballot or had voted early to not wait in line and possibly interfere with classes or duties. I felt the general excitement during the day along with the feeling of nervousness and anxiety. As I talked to my peers throughout the day, I found out most of them got their information from mainstream as it was so readily available. I got many responses saying that they did not do extra research, in fact were so tires of the election coverage everywhere. I found that interesting because I am always hesitate to believe mainstream since I feel they always say what we want to hear, not what we should hear.

I ended up going to the election party at the Cable center here at DU. Two of my political science professors were available to talk to people about the election and what was happening. The big screen had about 4-6 different channels being displayed. I know for sure we were watching FOX, CNN, CBS, and NBC and the others were in and out. It was interesting to see all channels at the same time, especially when we realized that some networks were faster than others. For example, FOX called a few of the blue states quite a bit before CNN. This is VERY interesting to us. The environment was great, everyone was cheering and praying. I went up to one of my Political Science professors at about 8:40 pm when I asked him if the election would end early. He said by 9:01pm we would know the winner, and sure enough, we had very quick results.

Overall, I think this experience was great and extremely historical. Its amazing how much influence the media has had and that is one of the predominant reasons why people were glad the election was over, the media.

Election day 2008

Election Day 2008 was truly a day for history. The United States elected the first African-American president for office. On top of it, he won by a land slide. Throughout the night I found my self flipping back and forward through the three channels mainly. Those were CBS, ABC, and NBC. It was interesting to see how all three stations were going along the same theme for coverage just with a different appearance. The channels were set up similarly to a football or basketball draft it seemed like. I particularly like ABC’s coverage of the election. For the first couple hours in which they were in the studio with ten or so huge plasma screens all displaying different things was a really cool way to approach the election information. It felt as if someone was giving a presentation with a well done power point. The large interactive touch screen that was being used to break down the states voting information was really neat. It was extremely interactive and I could see some Web 2.0 in it as well.

As for my friends, the majority of them were doing the same thing as me. They were watching it on television from their home and they were all watching the same channels as well. There were a lot of election parties that friends of mine were attending as well. Only one or two friends were following along with the election via internet because they had classes at night. The majority of my friends did early voting or mail in ballots because they either did not want to wait in line on Tuesday or because they had mailed in an absentee ballot to the state they were registered in. I mailed my ballot in about a week before the election in order to avoid lines as well. As far as my family members, everyone that I talked to all did early voting or mail in ballots as well. None of them went to the booths yesterday for mainly the same reasons as me.

Election day party's the new thing????

During the election day I talked to alot of other students in my class and I was suprised to find out that alot of people took the opperitutnity to vote early instead of going to the polls. The main reason most of them staed was the fact that they didnt want to stand in line to vote and they just wanted to go get there free Starbucks. I also found it intersting that alot of people I talked to and all of my friends where going to some form of election party. I just thought that was cool because during the 04 election I dont remember attending or my friends talking about going to an election day party. I went to the the cable center here on campus to watch the election coverage. For those of you that werent there they had CNN, NBC, Fox, And ABC all up at the same time but i mostly focused on CNN......to be honest I just liked there graphics better then the other stations. I also went to there wed site which I liked alot because once again the graphics but they had all of the election results all graphed out for me from senate, house, governer, and ballet measures by state just to name a few. I also found it intresting that they compaired the 04 election results with the 08 election results. CBS also did something like that but i dont think there web site is as fun as CNN.

Election Day '08

During the election coverage, I was mostly getting my news feeds from the internet, since I still had two classes yesterday and wasn't near my TV. It's definitely interesting to see the different "biases", if you will, from the different mainstream news sites.

CNN definitely focused more on Obama's campaign, whereas Fox News had significantly more McCain coverage. There were a couple of things that I saw on Fox News that grabbed my attention; I'm not sure if it was on CNN and MSNBC and those as well, but when it was being covered I was watching Fox News. There was an anchor reporting from a voting place that was being guarded by a "Black Panther" security guard, as the reporter called him, who they believed might have been intimidating voters. Apparently one of them had a nightstick that he was walking around with, but he had since left after the report was being shown. They got into a pretty heated argument on the air because the guard didn't think the reporter had the right to be showing him, when in fact, he did, and the reporter was trying to figure out what purpose the "Black Panther" had at a voting station. I thought it was pretty interesting to see how, with all the drive this election to get people to vote, there was also an opposing force trying to intimidate them into not voting.

Another interesting bit that I saw was also on Fox News, and it occured after Obama was announced as the winner. They were talking to Ralph Nader about his opinion of Obama being our next president. There was definitely a lot of doubt in Nader's statement, and at one point he said something roughly like "I wonder if he will be like Uncle Sam instead of Uncle Tom". At that point the anchor got pretty upset with Nader and basically stopped the discussion. The anchors on the show discussed what he said and basically concluded that Nader's career was over after that statement. I personally didn't think it was quite that big of a deal, but it was definitely a little sad to see Nader, someone who had contributed a lot to the nation back in the day, that bitter and, frankly, out of touch.

Here's the Nader video:



I was also reading the Huffington Post and it reminded me of something i'd see on CNN. All Obama. And political affiliations aside, I was a little disappointed as to how many "Probama" articles there were. Not only on the Huffington Post, but also just a general sentiment that floated around during the election was that electing Obama would be more important as a victory in breaking racial barriers, rather than what he actually will do for the country. And I think that's hogwash. I think that the racial card, if you will, further emphasized the "change" he'll bring to the country, and I think that definitely helped him in the election. But I just don't think it's significant in the grand scheme of things.

There was one alternative site that I mentioned earlier, Fact Check, that had some interesting notes on Obama's promises come election night. You can read about it here.
It basically reviews his promises regarding health care and the economy. Some of the other articles on there are pretty provocative, and I found myself going back there pre-election. One of the things I thought was most interesting were the result projections websites, like 270 to win, were spot on in their expectations. Although I don't really think the results in this election surprised anyone. It'll definitely be a good resource for future elections though.

Most of the people I talked to got their information, like me, off the internet. The only people I found that actually got most of their coverage off the TV were my parents. I'm not sure if it was just a convenience thing, or if TV coverage is just becoming a thing of the past.

What really happens

I found this website that not only explains exactly what happens on election day, but what it takes to win. It also voices the concerns of glitches and problems that might arise on Election Day and what happens the morning after the election. If you didn't already know how Election Day works, you might want to check out this website.

According to this page, the 2004 election had the highest voting turnout in years, but we apparently broke that record last night.

Election Day Coverage

On MSNBC.com they aren't, due to the request by the Democratic Party, reporting any results until the polls close tonight. However, they are reporting on the voting problems that are going on in Virginia and Pennsylvania. The article talks about how both states are reporting problems with several polling machines throughout the states and extremely long lines. Unfortunately, this may mean thousands of votes from these states may not be counted.

Voting problems were not Fox's main concern, their top story was reporting on where the candidates were today. McCain is here, in Colorado, before he heads down to New Mexico for a quick stop before heading home to Arizona where he will await the Election Day results. Obama was in his home state of Illinois where he voted with his family in tow before he headed to Indiana to make one last push for the Democratic Party.

The main difference I saw between these 2 media stations is that MSNBC seemed more interested in reporting breaking news stories (voting problems) and Fox seemed more interested in reporting "light" stories (where the candidates are this election day). Also, Fox had begun to report early votes from some states despite the democrats asking media outlets not to broadcast any results until the polls closed.

I used The Seminal as one of my independent media sources. They didn't
Really have any election news per se, but they did have links for voters to click on for more information or a way to report problems. They included the advice that once you get in line, stay there.

My other independent news source was the Colorado Springs Independent. One of their main articles was about how many people are having problems being able to check how they voted on the new digital polling machines and how when they asked for help often the election judges were much less than helpful.

The main difference I saw between these 2 independent news sources was that the Colorado Springs Independent seemed a more solid place to get your news from whereas The Seminal seemed kind of like a joke.

Overall, I think the two mainstream news sources and the Colorado Springs Independent were fairly good places to get your Election Day news from. However, unless you are reporting a polling problem I wouldn't suggest using The Seminal.

Most of the people I talked to said they got their Election Day information from mainstream media (watching NBC and CNN or listening to the radio or looking at MSNBC.com, etc.) They said throughout the day they would be checking these sources to find out who is in the lead, any new updates regarding any of the people or amendments on the ballot.

November 2008 Election

Well, my Nov. 4th started off with a hitch. Since I am registered as an absentee, I got my ballot (ahem *yesterday*) but I wasn't worried because I'd been told by CA that I could drop off here in CO. Turns out that isn't true and I got to spend about 3 hours on the phone today trying to find out what to do. Fun fun BUT I got to vote and that's all that matters.

So far, I've been using major news sources like MSBC.com and CNN to keep track of what is going on. CNN is particularly good because I don't have to be in front of the computer and refreshing the page to hear what's going on. MSNBC.com helped when I was supposed to be studying so I had the T.V. on mute...but I could hit the refresh page and cheat a little.

I did find a cool website that's hosting a "live blog" - Computer World - Election 2008 . I like how for a lot of the posts they give a short blurb and then a link to the story (if they pulled it from somewhere else). And it's updated pretty frequently. I like reading about what's going on around the country.

My other "non traditional" source was PBS.org, which posted more of a "who won what" when states were declared.

I started off my evening joining friends at the Cable Center, where we watched CNN on a HUGE screen. There were snacks and door prizes and everyone seemed to be having a good time. After awhile, the group went their separate ways and I headed over to a friends house for more studying and news coverage.

I cannot believe how early the announcement came in. One minute we're working on a presentation thinking that we'd have plenty of time to get this done and then we could watch politics, and the next we're seeing the OBAMA WIN'S THE PRESIDENCY stripe across the screen. Definitely distracting!

I spent the day keeping up with friends and family back home via IM and text messaging. My friends were doing the same, every so often picking up the phone to chat about a swing state or sending a text message. Among the people I was with/spoke with, phones were definitely the communication of choice.

All in all, it was one memorable day!

Facebook

I just checked my facebook and it seems like the site and everyone on it are doing a lot for election day.  

At the top of the home page is a count of how many people on facebook have voted so far (if you voted, you click a button which adds to the count).  People can also "donate" their status to Obama, it shows up like this... Jane Smith is the 1,445,824th person to donate their status to get out the vote for Barack Obama today.  Donate yours: http://causes.com/election/.  

Also about half my friends have "VOTE" or something about voting as their status.  I think this is really cool that people are using their personal profiles to help remind others about something that is really important! 

Some cool sites for the election

These are the sites that I used in my presentation, along with a couple more. They're pretty interesting and will obviously be pretty important as we approach the election.

ABC

Fact Check

MyDebates

270 To Win

Five Thirty Eight

News sites

I find this site to be a good "alternative" news site. It has a good mixture of headline news and also random news that can be interesting, and maybe hard to find on other sites.