Politics - The Internet’s Watching. The Internet’s Watching Past Sunday’s Duma Elections Were the First Russian Elections to Come Under So Much Scrutiny in RuNet, Social Networks and the Russian Blogosphere By Andrei Zolotov Jr. and Andrew RothRussia Profile12/05/2011 There is at least one area in which last Sunday’s parliamentary elections proved to be a breaking point, a milestone in the development of the Russian society.
It was the role that the Internet in general and social media in particular played in informing the public about the course of the polling, the fraud and the results of the vote. At about 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Anna Kachkaeva, a prominent Russian media expert and the dean of the Communications Department at the Higher School of Economics, wrote on her Facebook page: “Well, one can state that these elections are for the first time taking place in the real situation of parallel information flows – the official one and the one of mass civic networks.”
Helping cities work better. Harnessing Social Media Tools to Fight Corruption. I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed for this report on Harnessing Social Media Tools to Fight Corruption (PDF).
The study was prepared by Dana Bekri, Brynne Dunn, Isik Oguzertem, Yan Su and Shivani Upreti as part of a final project for their degree from the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The report was prepared for Transparency International (TI). As part of this project, the authors compiled a very useful database of projects that apply social tools to create greater transparency and accountability around corruption issues. The authors recommend that TI draw on this list of projects to catalyze an active network of civil society initiatives that challenge corruption.
The report also includes an interesting section on Mobilizing Volunteers and considers the role of volunteer networks as important in the fight against corruption.