Inspirés par la campagne de Barack Obama sur la Toile, les partis politiques s'emparent désormais des réseaux sociaux, à la manière de Facebook, pour en faire des "outils militants" en vue des prochaines échéances: régionales de 2010 et présidentielle de 2012.

For hardcore lovers of politics, Twitter served up the real-time nuts and bolts of campaigns racing to the finish line.

Troisième et dernière étage: le réseau militant "Epicentre". Avec cette plateforme de type "Facebook", les militants pourront organiser diverses rencontres et actions. Arnaud Dassier parle également d'une logique "méritocratique", les internautes voteront pour les meilleurs militants sur le réseau et les 10 ou 20 premiers seront régulièrement invités par Hervé Morin. Le NC ne fait que suivre un mouvement global, le PS, l'UMP et le PCF ont ou auront leurs propres réseaux sociaux.

Un extraordinaire mouvement populaire basé sur la micro contribution de millions de citoyens à travers une plateforme de mobilisation en ligne a alors balayé le modèle traditionnel d'une campagne basée sur l'action de militants coordonné par un parti.

Smith's community isn't the only smaller city or town to find itself suffering form a lack of local press. While the New York City mayoral election attracts interest from the New York Times, elsewhere the media landscape has changed drastically, thanks to the shuttering of smaller newspapers that were traditionally the source of local political coverage. In some places, social media is being used to try and replace some of what has been lost in terms of professional reporting.

Dominique de Villepin a ouvert depuis une semaine son réseau social, deux mois avant ceux de l'UMP et du PS. Une initiative qui pourrait lui servir de vitrine pour une future candidature en 2012.

President Obama declared during the campaign that "we are the ones we've been waiting for." That messianic phrase held the promise of a new style of politics in this time of tweets and pokes. But it was vague, a paradigm slipped casually into our drinks. To date, the taste has proven bittersweet.

the more interesting finding of the Pew study is that there's a new "pig in the python" in the generation of younger people who are using the Internet for political purposes at levels that literally blow everyone else off the charts

The Republican Party may not have made the best use of Facebook in last fall's elections, but If you're looking to keep tabs on the latest Sarah Palin news these days, your best bet is to become a fan of her on Facebook.

This article by Polis Summer School student Ida Ebbensgaard asks to what extent citizens are being politically empowered by having access to Twitter. She points out that there are severe limits to Twitter's political power, but she identifies its critical role as a kind of whistleblower to mainstream media.

Né en 2007, Politico est devenu le symbole du journalisme à l'ère d'Internet. Très ciblé, constamment mis à jour, il fait l'agenda de tous ceux qui comptent à Washington.

Pour expérimenter de nouvelles stratégies et attirer les jeunes, les mouvements de jeunesse des partis politiques misent sur les nouveaux moyens de communication.

Olivier BLONDEAU, consultant en communication politique, et Laurence ALLARD, maître de conférences en sciences de l'information et de la communication à l'université Lille-III, coauteurs de Devenir média. L'activisme sur Internet entre défection et expérimentation (Éd. Amsterdam, 2007) et chargés de la rubrique de veille « Politique 2.0 » de la Fondation pour l'innovation politique

This isn't the first time a State Department has supported a president. It's part of the job description. But technology seems to be greasing the wheels on that relationship. One or two runs below Clinton, there's tech-driven symbiosis afoot. Take Obama's speech last week in Accra, Ghana. It's a great example of how, using new media, two DC powerhouses are feeding off one another's efforts. A taste of what we're talking about here

Since early 2008, American University's Center for Social Media has been producing a series of field reports that profile innovative media for public knowledge and action. Published as part of the Center's Ford Foundation-supported Future of Public Media project (www.futureofpublicmedia.net), these case studies are designed to explore how publics form around participatory and multiplatform media projects. In this report, Nina Keim and Jessica Clark examine two linked projects related to the 2008 presidential election: Twitter Vote Report (TVR) and Inauguration Report '09 (IR09).

So the White House is taking a sensible multi-pronged approach to reaching Ghanaians. The blend includes SMS -- for both sending messages to the President and getting speech highlights -- and radio -- of both Obama's remarks and his responses to mobile messages, fleshed out with Twitter, Facebook, and live video streaming components.

Eric McKinnon (il a participé à la campagne de McCain) et Joe Rospars (patron de Blue State Digital , l'agence qui a géré l'essentiel de la campagne d'Obama en matière de New Media) sont d'accord pour dire que l'énergie mobilisée par le candidat était plus importante que les outils technologiques auxquels il a eu recours. Pour McKinnon: "c'est 5% d'outils et 95% d'énergie". Obama était un candidat exceptionnel".

For decades, we've assumed that inequality in relation to technology has everything to do with "access" and that if we fix the access problem, all will be fine. This is the grand narrative of concepts like the "digital divide." Yet, increasingly, we're seeing people with similar levels of access engage in fundamentally different ways. And we're seeing a social media landscape where participation "choice" leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions. This is most salient in the States which is intentionally the focus of my talk here today.

Although measuring engagement isn't necessarily always a numbers game, when online debate, collaboration, and conversation is a stated goal of a project, it would seem that a higher percentage of the target audience (Internet-using Americans) should have been involved, if only through comments and ratings.

Facebook Connect could ultimately give political campaigns more viral exposure for their online efforts. Campaign supporters who join Mr. Bloomberg's social network can easily invite their friends to join them in various online activities; if they sign up to attend a political event, that gets transferred back to Facebook too. Users are presented with options to withhold any and all of this information from Facebook if they wish.