A number of real world political parties and politicians have in the past couple of months started exploring Second Life as a new medium for spreading their messages and garnering real world press. Most recently, the youth arm of the far right French political party Le Pen appears to be opening an in-world office, according…
Category: Politics
The problematic of constituencies of color and Net Neutrality
Matt Stoller over at myDD.com posts a terrific commentary on the difficult political trade-offs for communities of color and the network neutrality debate. In a nutshell, Matt notes that while two major associations of black and hispanic journalists came out recently in support of net neutrality, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and…
Global Poverty Death Counter: good cause, shitty implementation
Let me start by saying that I am all for advocacy groups using virtual worlds to promote their causes. Virtual environments like Second Life are the newest forms of "new media" and as such should be certainly considered for use in political and awareness-raising campaigns. That said, I HATE the big billboard that the World…
Fantasy Congress : “gaming” the legislative process
My pal Tony just invited me to join his "Fantasy Congress" league. I was a bit dubious about this effort to make the US legislative process into a game, but it seems actually quite well thought out. From the FAQ: Fantasy Congress™ offers you the power to "play politics." As in other fantasy sports, you…
Every Time You Vote against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf
Hilariously titled "Every Time You Vote against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf" an article by Tony Greenberg and Alex Veytsel of Ramprate argues that online massively-multiplayer online games will be the first to get the knife if Net Neutrality provisions go out the window. They contend that online video will survive in…
Buy a virtual car — defend freedom on the Net!
Motarati announces that all the proceeds of the sales of the virtual Pontiac Solstice GXP will go to benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit that has been defending freedom in cyberspace for as long as there has been a cyberspace. Suu-weeeet!
Returning to the virtual Camp Darfur
During the talk that In Kenzo and I gave at RootsCamp on SL political organizing last week, In Kenzo brought up that she and a team of other volunteers had been working very hard over the past months to create the virtual Camp Darfur as an awareness raising and politicizing tool. I realized that I…
Pics and transcript from talk on SL political organizing
Tonight In Kenzo and I gave a little talk on the subject of Second Life political organizing and awareness raising. We had a small but very engaged group of a dozen or so progressive activists participating in "RootsCamp," a weeklong series of discussions on the fallout from the recent US elections. What follows is a…
Off to lefty camp with In Kenzo: today at 3pm PST!
Just a quick reminder that the lovely and talented In Kenzo and I will be presenting on the subject of Second Life political organizing and awareness raising campaigns at 3PM SLT / 6PM EST on Better World Island (direct SLURL). Part of a weeklong series of in-world meetings of progressive activists called "RootsCamp," I’m excited…
RootCamps in SL line-up for the coming week
The Second Life version of RootsCamp has quickly taken shape in the past day or so, with several exciting sessions coming together. RootsCamps are informal real world gatherings for progressive (mostly) American activists and organizers to discuss the results of the recent elections and start planning for the 2008 Presidential election. From what was only…