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"We just made history." That Nov. 5, 2008 tweet from the campaign of Barack Obama capped off the first presidential election of the social media age. Four years earlier, Howard Dean had begun to reveal the power of the Internet for fundraising and organizing in his losing effort, but it was the 2008 Obama campaign that really demonstrated social media's power to be transformative of the political process. And yet, social media as we know it today was in its infancy.

Failed startup offers some advice for building a social platform for political engagement. The article provides good insight into transforming ideas (ideals?) into software.

I figured this would interest most people in our class. "As Election Day nears, Twitter's new "Political Engagement Map" lets users see where people are most interested about specific issues -- at least as measured by tweeting patterns."

Mr. Ignatieff is so smart and eloquent about the continuing political decline in North America. Interesting in this article is the stress placed on dialogue and compromise between elected officials (regardless of party associations) as essential to the democratic process.

This is perhaps more relevant to our Communications theory class, or even for those of us in the Presentation class, but regardless I found this to be a really concise and interesting way of breaking down communication rhetorical strategies in the political realm.

This article from the summer discusses First Nations leaders use of social media in the recent AFN election for National Chief. It is interesting because it talks about the impact of new new media for voters in remote communities. 

OTTAWA - Tony Clement may be king of social media in political circles on Parliament Hill, but he didn't get to be mayor of his own Twitter town hall. During an online chat on the subject of open government, the Treasury Board president, who is a prolific tweeter, had a ghostwriter doing most of the work for him.

I thought this was an interesting article connecting the social media platform of twitter with the political world.

Looking at how a politician turns to reddit to see legislative advice. Showing how technology/social media is being used to engage the public on political issues- even the future of their governance. 

I like it already, read about this on reddit (of all places), very interesting!

Some of you might be interested in the web presentation. It's November 6 at 11 am PST.

I am very interested in the political debates leading up to the U.S. presidential election, and thought this was a good article about the most recent VP debate and twitter.

Gawker's Adrian Chen tracks down the identity of reddit.com's violentacrez. I'd never heard of this person, but the headline grabbed my attention. The article has some really great insight into how reddit is run and the role of moderators on the sites boards. Also an interesting read in regards to the politics of online identity protection and the role of anonymity in online communications.

a youtube of cbc on the use of online privacy and the LGBT issue. asking interesting questions about how government uses the internet to contact certain groups. 

So even though we are very pro-social media and information sharing, this article shows the other side of the coin. Apparently many people were annoyed with being bombarded with election related votes - something that I hadn't considered until now. Pretty interesting read.

Incredibly relevant given our discussion in class today. I know what I said this morning about not believing anonymous comments to be integral to free speech, but I have to say I'm not at all keen on the proposal of this type of law.

A real example of the democratic potential of social media...

Justin Trudeau talking social media at the Facebook Summit in Toronto - and it's impact on elections. 

On Saturday evening, Iceland took an important first step toward rewriting its constitution, as the majority of population of the small island nation voted in favour of using a crowdsourced draft as the basis its new constitution.

Wow. This is really interesting and such a great way to present the information.