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Blog from the New Internationalist about the movement taking place in the UK to donate votes for the upcoming elections, called "Give Your Vote". The idea is for UK citizens to donate their vote to someone in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Ghana. These countries were chosen due to the involvement of the UK in all these countries through various ways (ie troops, legislation that has an impact on climate change, trade). In each country they have a sister campaign called "Use a UK Vote". Effectively it is a means for citizens of these nations to voice their opinions. The movement demonstrates global democracy in a sense. A word of warning - if you want to visit the site http://www.giveyourvote.org/ it's not particularly user friendly. Under the heading there are subheadings (however they are invisible).

Hi everyone, here is my first blog post! It discusses 'Give Your Vote', the movement in the UK asking citizens to donate thier votes to people in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Ghana.

This article has explored the successful application of internet in Obama's political campaign. Obama's is said to be the first internet president. This article analyzes the advantage of the new media internet campared to the traditional media such as Newspaper, Television, radio, newspaper and so on. As is listed in the article the main advantages of the internet for the campaign use are including the ability to focus on specific demographic segment, and the convenience to create a place for participant to donate, and as is said by the author Samuel Greengard "Obama's staff could conduct polls, solicit ideas and opinions, and hold online town，hall meetings." However this article does not explore the reasons why Internet has this power deeply enough. Behind this power, in my opinoin, it is the "recursive public" that exerts impacts, it would be better if the author also to the "social capital" theory to analyze the power of the internet.

Although not strictly a "protest" in the strictest sense of the word, the Kiss Goodbye to MS movement has similarities with protest movements - people with a unified belief acting together to facilitate change. The main action required to take part is to wear red lipstick during MS Awareness Week in Australia: 26th May to 6th June. I wondered how men could get involved - the obligatory Facebook group encourages tattoos can be used as a talking point rather than lipstick. Others can simply donate to the cause. The charity sector is incredibly crowded (for good reason) and charities have increasingly bigger marketing teams to capture the public's attention. Social media is just the latest avenue that corporations and not-for-profits are using to drive awareness.

Two Australian bloggers were selected in an online search and will now spend two weeks educating Bangladeshis on how to source content and publish a blog. Working with group ActionAid, their aim is to give poverty a voice.