Later in the evening, I’ll be going for a book reading session of ‘Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics’ by Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox at Busboys and Poets.
Surprisingly, neither the Netroots Rising website, nor the book’s Amazon page offers a blurb! So, here’s the blurb from the Busboys and Poets events listings –
The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional “top-down” central broadcasters to new “bottom-up” decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb’s “rag-tag army” of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen’s senatorial bid.
It seems to me that the prominent use of social media tools in election campaigns has introduced social media to a set of Americans who wouldn’t have been interested in it otherwise. As a result, there’s suddenly a lot of interest in the use of social media to engage (young) citizens in civic issues. Books like Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age and ‘Netroots Rising’ are an indicator of this interest.
So, do you see social media tools being extensively used for civic engagement in developing countries like India anytime soon? Of course, before that happens, Indian (mobile) web usage will need to grow out of its gaming/ entertainment phase.
