[Air-L] ask your lawmaker

Steve Jones sjones at uic.edu
Mon Jan 12 04:09:06 PST 2009


I believe the Santa Monica system mentioned was part of the PEN  
(Public Electronic Network) project that Joe Schmitz, Ken Phillips,  
Janet Fulk and others worked on in the 1980s. It's a fascinating case.  
See http://www.mckeown.net/PENaddress.html for a brief description.  
Studies of it have been fairly widely published (including one in my  
Virtual Culture collection).

Sj

On Jan 12, 2009, at 3:57 AM, Murray Turoff wrote:

> Deborah, I applaud what you did and you might be interested there is a
> facebook users group based upon efforts to allow citizens to directly
> vote on budget allocations in local government that is receiving some
> experimental usage in Italy, it is titled something like participatory
> democracy.  It does generate specific dialogues between citizens and
> elected official.  One potential improvement is to have some sort of
> list of very specific topics of concern to the users and to encourage
> group discussions.
>
> The reverse application of allowing lawmakers to ask questions they
> need answers for is described below.
>
> Two reports on a system designed to allow state legislative lawmakers
> to ask questions of professionals in many different fields and among
> the state legislature science advisers, usually volunteers retired, or
> representatives of major scientific and engineering societies.
> It worked very well for about three years before they ran out of NSF  
> funds.
>
> http://library.njit.edu/archives/cccc-materials/
>
> RR#13  	Guide to the topics system 	Jan. 1981 	Peter Johnson-Lenz,
> Trudy Johnson Lenz
> RR#14 	The evolution of a tailored communications structure : the
> topics system 	Jan. 1981 	Peter Johnson-Lenz, Trudy Johnson Lenz
>
> There was a system set up in text for what you are doing for the Santa
> Monica city government in California.  The citizens participated but
> many of the elective officials chose to ignore the system.  It is
> referenced in the "network nation" book I believe along with related
> things like "community memory" in Berkely.
>
>
>
>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:23:19 -0500
>> From: "Deborah Elizabeth Finn"
>>       <deborah_elizabeth_finn at post.harvard.edu>
>> Subject: [Air-L] Just launched: The "Ask Your Lawmaker" widget
>> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
>> Message-ID:
>>       <3228c2a50901111223s4f0951c5wf7a03cc721d6c59d at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>
>> Dear AIR Colleagues,
>>
>> Before I start bubbling over with enthusiasm, I need to make a full
>> disclosure:  I serve as a paid consultant to Capitol News Connection
>> (CNC).  Urging people to use the Ask Your Lawmaker widget
>> <http://askyourlawmaker.org/widget> is part of what I'm paid to do.
>>
>> That said, I thought that some of you would be interested in tracking
>> or studying this geeky yet populist approach to strengthening
>> participatory democracy.
>>
>> Capitol News Connection is a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism
>> organization that is based in Washington, DC.  Ask Your Lawmaker  
>> (AYL)
>> is one of their online initiatives; constituents from any district in
>> the U.S. can pose questions to their senators and representatives by
>> posting them to the web site, and then anyone who is interested in
>> legislation and policy can go to the site and vote for the questions
>> that he or she deems most crucial.  The CNC reporters are  
>> conveniently
>> headquartered on Capitol Hill, and when a question garners enough
>> votes, they go out and ask the legislator(s) to which it is  
>> addressed.
>> The responses are recorded in broadcast-quality audio, and posted to
>> the web.  They are also made available to local public radio  
>> stations,
>> which are often in need of quotes they can use back in the home
>> district when they report on national issues.
>>
>> Ask Your Lawmaker is now making a laudable move into Web 2.0  
>> territory
>> by offering nonprofit advocacy groups and individual activists a free
>> widget that they can use on their own web sites or Facebook pages.
>> It's a way for advocates to voice their concerns, and to engage their
>> stakeholders in pressing legislators to address an issue,
>>
>> This widget is only the beginning. Capitol News Connection is working
>> on many more ideas for making national news coverage more
>> participatory and holding legislators more accountable to their
>> constituents.  In a time when every community activist can also be a
>> citizen journalist, and RSS feeds are making it easy to syndicate  
>> news
>> selectively, Ask Your Lawmaker is poised to become a provider of
>> tailor-made news streams for any advocacy group.
>>
>> Best regards from Deborah
>>
>> P.S.  This post to AIR-L is based on a blog article that I wrote.   
>> You
>> can see the article (and the AYL widget that I created for myself) at
>> <http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2009/1/8/4050172.html 
>> >
>>
>> Deborah Elizabeth Finn
>> Cyber-Yenta
>> Boston, Massachusetts, USA
>> deborah_elizabeth_finn at post.harvard.edu
>> www.cyber-yenta.org
>> Skype:  Deborah909
>> Twitter: Deborah909
>> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah909
>>
>> "Nothing softeneth the Arrogance of our Nature
>> like a Mixture of some Frailties. It is by them
>> that we are best told, that we must not strike
>> too hard upon others....They pull our Rage by
>> the sleeve and whisper Gentleness to us in our
>> censures."
>> -George Savile (1633 - 1695)
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
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>> End of Air-L Digest, Vol 54, Issue 12
>> *************************************
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Distinguished Professor Emeritus
> Information Systems, NJIT
> homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff
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