Crowd sourcing: the political future or a load of hype?

Rory Cellan-Jones has written one of the best posts I’ve read this year on the internet and political campaigning – i.e. it takes the impact of the internet seriously but doesn’t swallow all the hype. He starts:

Are the political parties now too impoverished – or just too bone idle – to do the basic work of research and campaigning by themselves? Or do they really believe in the wisdom of crowds? 
I ask because both Labour and the Conservatives appear to have caught the crowdsourcing bug.

The rest of the article is a good piece of analysis, not taking Tory and Labour claims at face value and also remembering that:

Well I think the Liberal Democrats might contest [Labour’s claims to be the first to crowd source political adverts] – they’ve had a campaign running for a while on their ACT social networking site, inviting activists to “design a poster promoting the core Lib Dem value of ‘Fairness'”. They already have a number of entries up on the site, and appear to be making their “crowdsourcing” more of a public affair than either the Conservatives or Labour.

The full piece is well worth a read.

Read more by or more about or .
This entry was posted in Online politics.
Advert

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Jonathan Brown
    I really like this. Thanks for writing about it - I haven't been following Renew Europe developments!...
  • John B Grout
    Excellent piece, Josh. As for seeking others' thoughts on the pitch, here are mine: Labour and the Greens want to do things for you, the Conservatives and R...
  • David Evans
    It's an interesting article, which gives us more to think about, but when it ends with "Government and politics can strive toward this platform ... giving ind...
  • Neil Sandison
    This one of a series of articles recently published in the Liberal Democrat Voice that defines our social liberal values . Frequently the hot house of Westminst...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This is the right problem to be working on, and I think the answer may be less about the words than about the moments. In my experience people learn what we sta...