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.