Science Addiction

A dormant blog by Devanshu Mehta

Tag: citizen media

October 20, 2008

The Twitter Vote Report Project

As I had mentioned a few days ago in my round-up of citizen journalism efforts for the 2008 elections here in the United States, Twitter is proving to be ground-zero for the election zeitgeist.

Now we get the Twitter Vote Report project, which has introduced a few tags for election-day reporting about voting issues.

  • #votereport- for reporting basic voting issues
  • #machine- for reporting voting machine issues
  • #registration- for registration problems
  • #wait:time- for waiting time, where ‘time’ is number of minutes
  • #EP[two letter state code]- for serious legal issues in that state (e.g. EPOH in Ohio)
  • zipcode: to denote your exact location

A lot more is being planned to mine, use and act upon this information. There is a code jamming session on the 24th of October and guides are being developed for situations in which the above codes should be used.

techPresident highlights some of the issues that still need to be worked out:

  • How do you get real people to use this, as opposed to the twitterati.
  • Do we let the response be organic or organized?
  • How to clarify the intent of this project (as opposed to the many others being organized)

And so forth. It’s all worth watching and participating in.

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October 17, 2008

Citizen Journalism Resources for Election Day

citizen journalism

in India

This election will be remembered as the first one where traditional media relied heavily on citizen journalism and new media. Take a look at Twitter’s Election 2008 live feed to get a feel for the political zeitgeist. Or how Free Press created “Rate the Debates”:http://www.freepress.net/debates to provide actual input from people before the pundits could formulate their conventional wisdom. Or how C-SPAN and NPR mined twitter for live fact checking, dialtests and general citizen journalism.

Well, election day will be no different. Twitter will probably end up being the place to gain a sense of the situation on the ground, but a lot of other web sites are hoping to provide people with the tools to report voter suppression, other problems and experiences. Here are a few resources:

SourceWatch.org’s Election Protection Wiki

The Election Protection Wiki is a non-partisan, non-profit collaboration of citizens, activists and researchers to build a one-stop-shop for reports of voter suppression and the systemic threats to election integrity. We collect just the straight facts that are fully referenced to external, verifiable sources, and we need your help.


Wired’s Election Problem Reporting Site

Over the next weeks, if you have trouble at the polls, either during early voting or on Election Day, we’d like you to add your issue to our map. Be sure to provide as much detail as possible. You may also include links to video or audio.


YouTube & PBS: Video Your Vote

YouTube’s Video Your Vote, a non-partisan program produced in partnership with PBS, encourages American voters to document their voting experiences.

Whether it’s a video shot at the polls on Election Day, an account of your early voting experience, or you filming yourself filling out an absentee ballot — we want you to upload it here.

The Video Your Vote channel is also a one-stop-shop to view exclusive videos from voter registration experts, election reform activists, and state officials, as well as video footage from the PBS archives for a historical look at voting through the years.


Voter Suppression Wiki

This site is designed to be a hub of information and action around efforts to suppress votes in the 2008 U.S. elections.


Citizen Media Law Project Blog
Has a lot of resources on the legality of documenting your vote and the areas in and around polling places.

The New York Times Polling Place Photo Project

The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this years primaries, caucuses and general election. By documenting local voting experiences, participants can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America.

Twitter Vote Report Project

Anyone with a Twitter.com account can use their cell phones or their computers to send a message and notify voters and election monitors around the country.

I will add more to this page as I discover them.

UPDATE: Some resources to make sure your vote gets counted.

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