Add an eventSessions at SXSW Interactive 2012 about Politics and Social Media
Friday 9th March 2012
-
Social Media Sharecropping: Black Tech Adoption
This panel is about the many ways in which modern internet adoption and use mirrors the development of agrarian sharecropping in the South following the Civil War- whereby African Americans provided massive amounts of labor to make other people rich, but could never move beyond basic subsistence living. According to the Pew Internet& American Life Project,as of May 2011, 25% of online African Americans now use Twitter, compared with 9% of such whites. African-American and Latino internet users are each significantly more likely than whites to be Twitter adopters. One out of ten African-American internet users now visit Twitter on a typical day—that is double the rate for Latinos and nearly four times the rate for whites. Pew research has also indicated that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely to use mobile devices to text message, use social networking sites, use the internet, watch and record videos, make charitable donation, use email, play games, listen to music, instant message and post multimedia content online. Yet disproportionate consumption of technology among Blacks, does not appear to be translating into wealth building and job creation in a community facing a 16.1 unemployment rate. Techcrunch founder, Michael Arrington caused a minor controversy when CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asked him about Black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Arrington replied “I don’t know a single Black entrepreneur.” In 2012, the definition of Digital Divide appears to have shifted from access to technology to how communities of color leverage that technology.
Saturday 10th March 2012
-
Social Media in Colombia: An Agent for Change
by Andrés Traslaviña MS Ed and Daniel Medina MBA
The role of social media has been instrumental in the more recent political and economic development of Colombia, especially overcoming a devastating period of civil strife and violence. What inspired people to protest against violence? Colombia’s former Minister of Telecommunications will discuss how social media empowered people to join the war against drug trafficking and defeat the FARC, the guerillas of the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia. We discuss their own experience growing up in a drug-funded violent country known as “narcoterrorism”, which affected every level of society and became the greatest threat to social stability starting in the late 1980s. This caused them and many others to leave the country in search of freedom. The speakers will share their insight about how social media will continue to help decrease poverty levels and increase literacy in marginalized areas in Colombia, thus improving the well-being of people and promoting socio-economic equity.
-
Social Media and Politics Meet Up
Get together with other social media and politics experts for an hour of brainstorming, idea-buidling, networking, friend-making and career-enhancement. Or, attend this Meet Up to learn more about this segment of the industry -- or if you are looking to hire a social media and politics expert for your campaign.
Sunday 11th March 2012
-
Socializing the Presidency: Digital Politics 2012
by Christina Bellantoni, Craig Newmark, Heather Smith, Maria Teresa Kumar and Mary Katharine Ham
What are the trends in social and digital media that will help shape the 2012 presidential election? What can we learn from grassroots election efforts like Rock the Vote, now in its 20th year, contrasted with the very short history and transformational social media tactics used in recent presidential politics? Is it a natural evolution of activism, is it disruptive? If so - how? Join PBS NewsHour moderator Christina Bellantoni and panelists Mary Katharine Ham (radio host/political commentator); Maria Teresa Kumar (founding executive director, Voto Latino); Craig Newmark (founder craigslist and craigconnects); Heather Smith (president, Rock the Vote); and others to be announced, for a wide-ranging, idea-generating, big-picture discussion of trends past, present and future on how the presidential election may be shaped and transformed by social media services such as Twitter and Facebook to new location based and mobile technologies.
-
But Hasn't Politics Always Been Social?
by Adam Conner and Katie Harbath
Everyone is talking about how "social media" is changing politics and elections. But hasn't politics always been social? Townhalls, rallies, knocking on doors, talking to friends and the act of asking for a vote has always been a social experience. But now, thanks to new technology, we can see what social means for politics in the U.S. and around the world. Join Facebook's political outreach gurus, Adam Conner (D) and Katie Harbath (R), as these bipartisan campaign veterans explain why “social” isn’t a new phenomenon but the core of American democracy and how 2012 can become year of "the social campaign."
-
Still Invisible? Waging Stories with Social Media
by Felipe Matos, Heather Cronk, Jackie Mahendra, Joe Sudbay and Jehmu Greene
What does it mean to wage a story? In this panel, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas describes the moment of coming out as an undocumented immigrant, an "outlaw" in his own country. He explores the ways in which his radically visible story traveled from the New York Times to Facebook to Youtube and back -- and forced a toxic national debate into a human frame. As context for Jose's incredible story, Joe Sudbay, Deputy Editor of AMERICABlog, describes how bold, hi-tech storytelling transformed the political calculus during the waning months of the last Congress and landed him in a meeting with President Obama at the White House. Felipe Matos takes us on a journey that reinvents what it means to push for civil rights: a 1,500 mile walk from Miami to DC, tweeted at every turn.These hypervisible, once-invisible stories are changing what we thought we knew about the communities that are "coming out," as well as how to tap the power of social media to ignite change.
Monday 12th March 2012
-
Voting’s Viral: Voters, Election Officials & Social
by Dana Chisnell, Dean Logan, Jared Marcotte, Jeannie Layson and Lee Rainie
How do you get reliable information about elections? Many voters get their information about who is running for election and what the issues are from friends and family. Increasingly, those friends and family are online, getting their information from social media sources and passing it on. What’s the conversation between voters and election officials? What’s the potential for increasing civic engagement through social media? This panel will discuss breakthroughs and cautions, experiences and pointers. What you learn about who is using what and why will surprise you.
-
How Social Media Imperils Political Parties
by Joe Trippi, Marci Harris, Mark McKinnon, Matt Bai and Nathan Daschle
Most things in our lives are now custom fit. If we want coffee, we can order it 50 ways. If we want to watch a movie, we can choose between Netflix, iTunes, On Demand, etc. If we need a restaurant review, we have OpenTable, Yelp, etc. However, for one of the most important aspects of our life, politics, we still have only two "meat or fish" options. We are also at a point where people are more disaffected than ever by political parties. A Pew post-election poll in 2010 found for the first time in modern American history, Independents outnumbered Democrats and Republicans in terms of party affiliation. This need for tailoring our lives has now met our distaste for political institutions. While political parties will always be a piece of American politics, their relevance is being severely diminished by the growth of social media. The biggest political movements in the last year (Wisconsin, the Arab Spring, the Tea Party movement) all came together OUTSIDE of political institutions, not from within (and largely due to social media). This panel will discuss this trend.
-
An Unusual Arsenal: Tech Tools to Topple a Tyrant
by David Gorodyansky, Jamal Dajani, Neal Ungerleider, Sonja Gittens-Ottley and Aasil Ahmad
Instead of guns and knives, the revolutionaries who descended upon Tahrir Square on Feb. 1 packed a potent arsenal of technological tools that ended the corrupt, 30-year reign of President Hosni Mubarak. Their weapons of choice: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – everyday tools that can be used to plan a party or plot a revolution.
“We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world,” wrote one protester in a particularly succinct tweet.
But with one third of the world living under Internet censorship, the tools we take for granted in America are precious commodities elsewhere. When Mubarak’s government hit the kill switch, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – and those using these tools to rally – were rendered powerless. When the Internet goes black, as it did Jan. 27, how do revolutionaries access these invaluable social channels to communicate, mobilize and ultimately overthrow an unjust government? How do citizens in radio silence tune into the rest of the world – without incurring the wrath of their government? What are the tools behind the tools that every revolutionary should include in his tool kit? And why should you care?
Tuesday 13th March 2012
-
How the White House is Mobilizing Social Media
From his first day in office, President Obama put a priority on an open and engaging government. From Hangouts to hashtags, the White House is utilizing social media to interact with Americans everyday on the issues that they care about the most. As the first Administration in history to have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and elsewhere online, the White House’s social media strategy is focused on creating opportunities for meaningful engagement. This session will highlight the #40dollars campaign surrounding the payroll tax cut extension, White House Hangouts and more. Kori Schulman, Deputy Director of Online Outreach at the White House, will discuss how the Administration is breaking new ground to engage with citizens in the digital age and what’s next.
-
2012: Social Media’s New Role in Politics
by Ben Parr, Mark Blumenthal, Vishal Sankhla and Khris Loux
Social media has earned a prominent seat at the table with the large media companies of the world and has birthed an entirely new way to cover the world of politics. As we approach the electoral year, political chatter will continue to snowball and generate enormous heaps of data. Data can drastically impact how we determine the importance of a given story, the ways that we gauge public opinion and eventually may even revolutionize the way we cast our votes. This panel will discuss the many ways that the web is providing entirely new tools and resources to track and cover the world of politics and discuss the unique perspective social media data paints for the voice of a bolder and broader demographic. This panel will feature experts in political news, new media, data crunching and the real-time web debating the future of political coverage and the impact of new social technologies on political news and research.
-
Senate Committees Push Boundaries on Social Media
by Conor Kenny and Steven Polunsky
The bulk of social media and Web 2.0 use in Congress and state legislatures has until now largely been composed of personal tweets and posts by legislators and staff, pushing communications out without engaging in true conversations with constituents. Innovation in this area has lagged the private sector.One Texas Senate committee is changing that. Charged by Chairman John Carona to “push the envelope so hard it’s no longer stationery,” the Business and Commerce Committee is moving out with social media. They began by examining the legislative process and identifying each point where lobbyists and advocates have special access to information or legislators, then looked for technologies that would level the playing field, open the process to the public, or help generate consensus. As a testbed, the committee is currently tackling a tough issue –payday lending – and they’ll tell you what they’re doing, what’s worked and where they think Gov2.0 is going.
Schedule incomplete?
Filter by Day
Filter by Session type
Filter by coverage
- Audio 8
Filter by Topic
Filter by Venue
- AT&T 8
- ACC 3
- Omni Downtown 1