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.
2 comments:
so what about the second question?
I like that you included pictures of people watching Obama on television. Another thing I really liked was that you did, was talk about what you should look at when you are deciding who to vote for.
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