Political transparency and web 2.0

Over the past few years there have been a number of initiatives on institutional transparency – FOI legislation, expenses reporting – that together with greater administrative decentralisation have helped increase accountability in the political system.
Having said this, sleaze is making a comeback which means that we need to up our game once more to continue [...]

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New gateway to Labour blogging launched

It was no secret that Derek Draper was launching a new site aimed at strengthening Labour’s online army in the war of the blogs. A meeting was organised a few weeks ago by Draper for a bunch of Labour people to hear what Blue State Digital, the online strategy firm behind Obama’s online campaign, had [...]

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Back in time with…

Brilliant idea from the developers at Google. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the company they have decided to let us take an unusual trip back in time. You remember how the internet was in January 2001? No Youtube, Facebook, September 11th, David Cameron, this blog… It is quite shocking how much the internet has [...]

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Total Politics blogging guide out (for free)

If anyone is interested in reading about the state of the British blogosphere without spending any money or getting the guide for free at any of the parties’ conferences, just click here to get a pdf copy of the guide for free. Enjoy!

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Stay at home Saturday reading

Brilliant post by Charlie Beckett in defense of ‘amateur’ creativity in the face of professional journalists’ patronising attitude to the blogosphere. Essential reading.

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Friday round-up

Well the weekend is upon us. Today it’s been an extremely unproductive day. I have watched most of the Olympics Inauguration Ceremony (really really impressive), failed to finish off the methodology section of my dissertation and not much inspiration for blogging today either. But just a quick post with a couple of interesting things I [...]

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The government and web 2.0

I just found out through Dizzy that No. 10 plans to launch a TV channel. It certainly does no harm if it helps to provide greater transparency, although I presume it won’t be too much fun to watch either. But the ‘funny’ thing Dizzy has found out is that their announcement wasn’t followed by taking [...]

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Labour and web 2.0- a new home for the netroots

I have blogged before (here and here) about the need for Labour to promote its web 2.0 operation more agressively. Although the UK is still well behind the US in terms of online campaigning, eventually political internet mobilisation will become crucial here as well.
Yesterday I came across Labour Outlook, a nice looking site that aims [...]

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Campus Party kicks off in Spain

The world’s annual biggest LAN party, Campus Party, is kicking off in Valencia tomorrow. This 12th edition is the biggest yet with more than 8,000 participants.
The Campus Party was created by networked groups of computer science sudents across Spain. You can read the history of the gathering here. A great deal of people that attend [...]

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Prescott on Brown

John Prescott has written a post for LabourHome today declaring his support for Gordon Brown to stay on as leader.
Two important points to be made about this:
1) As the blogosphere’s influence in the UK political world grows exponentially, it’s essential for Labour to catch up with the Tories more developed web 2.0 operation. LabourHome has [...]

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