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Net & Politics 2008 (Top 10)

The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics

PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum are proud to announce the list for nominations of the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. For the ninth year in a row, PoliticsOnline subscribers and visitors from around the world are invited to help select the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.

This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year’s diverse, international nominees.

The winners, those top 10 nominees who receive the most votes, will be invited as honored guests to the world eDemocracy Forum October 16-17, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France), where they’ll take part in an awards ceremony and other special programs throughout the two-day forum.

Past Winners by Year: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003

The Nominees for 2008

Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
 Chooseorlose.com, a multi-media community where young people post their own video, audio, photos, and blog about the issues that matter most to them.

David All
 Slatecard.com, the Republican counter to the Democrats’ ActBlue.com. More than 55 candidates use the platform, and they all raised over $1M in their first election cycle. Because of David’s work, Congressman Jack Kingston of GA was named the 2006 Golden Dot Award for Online Politician of the Year by IDPI. He coordinated the Open House Project (increasing government transparency), and had it endorsed by John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi in an op-ed in The Hill. In 2007, he started TechRepublican.com, a group blog focusing like a laser on the intersection of Republican politics and technology. C & E named him among their ‘08 class of Rising Stars.

mySociety
 TheyWorkForYou.com, with 2 million unique users last year, which continues to set the standard for what a political transparency website should be like across the globe, mySociety also helps people with tangible problems like getting potholes fixed at FixMyStreet.com - 7000+ real world problems like grafitti and dumped trash confirmed fixed so far. mySociety also leads the field in building challenging, truly interactive sites for the executive branch - mySociety’s petitions site for 10 Downing Street has over 8m signatures from around 10% of the entire UK population, perhaps the largest non-partisan democracy website ever built. And all by a tiny NGO with a handful of staff and some awesome volunteers.

Sunlight Foundation
 Mardomak.org. The site provides unbiased news and information for an Iranian audience with the aim of increasing civic awareness and encouraging civic participation. To that end, Mardomak.org was one of the only unique sites providing comprehensive coverage and analysis of Iran’s Parliamentary elections in March 2008. Despite a hard-line approach by the Iranian government on online publications (censorship is common and many sites get filtered) Mardomak has successfully proven that by being unbiased and fair, and by providing information, paired with cutting edge online features and technology, there is still room to promote civic engagement and political dialogue in Iran. Groundbreaking features (in the Iranian context) that Mardomak.org utilizes include: widgets, interactive photo albums, interactive maps, online polls, and political scorecards for elected officials.

eGovernment Resource Centre
 TechPresident.com covers the gamut of online campaign activities: from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to video postings on YouTube and who’s got the fastest growing group of friends on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. TechPresident’s “Daily Digest” email newsletter has become a must-read for the leading journalists, bloggers and activists. TechPresident led the online discussion of how the Obama campaign was taking advantage of social media tools and will be leading the charge in understanding how the campaign tools will be used in governance.

Helium
 Email
 Email
 NewAssignment.Net. Its citizen journalists have broken some of the biggest stories of the presidential campaign season in the United States, and set new precedents for reporting in the digital age. New York Magazine credited OTB with creating the genre of citizen journalism. By combining the best traditions of legacy journalism with the democratic technology of the Web, by applying professional standards and techniques to citizen-based reporting, OTB has developed and refined a collaborative methodology for producing unique news stories beyond the scope of a traditional reporter or news organization. Since it launched in mid-summer of 2007, OffTheBus has quickly grown to more than 9,000 contributors.

Cuidad Politico
 Farmsubsidy.org. Using the freedom of information law, they have forced European governments to release detailed data on who gets what from Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy. All 27 EU countries will disclose data revealing details of some 100bn given in subsidies by the Euro-taxpayer every year to farmers, food companies, industrial regeneration schemes and the fishing industry.

Argentina Elections
argentinaelections.com/
This site vitally contributed to the discussion of the presidential elections in Argentina in last October 2007. The site included interviews to candidates, academics, electoral experts and journalists. Also, it allowed people to leave comments in the posted articles enriching the discussion. It provided an electoral guide that answered almost all doubts regarding the elections and included the electoral platforms and biographies of all 14 candidates.

EUObserver
euobserver.com
EUobserver is an online news service dedicated to providing news on the European Union. It is the only European newsmedia embracing updates from all over Europe as well as leading news from the EU capital Brussels. A classic combination of news and comments provide a unique meeting place for all, who are interested in the most important political developments on our continent.