Bente Kalsnes' blog

Can open data win votes?

18/01/2010 · 3 Comments

Some politicians seems to think so. Especially in Britain right now. Remember, there is a general election in the UK in June.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Labour) called for smarter government back in December when he presented the reform of public sector, assisted by the legendary WWW-father Tim Berners-Lee. Brown talkes about what he calls “third generation of public service”:

The next stage of public service reform will be characterised by a radical shift of power to the users of public services, all users, not just those who are wealthy and powerful, not just those who have the resources to make the best of what government offers them. Power will shift to everyone who needs to use our public services.

In shorter and clearer words; Berners-Lee is leading the work to ‘make public data public’, and the data.gov.uk (inspired by the American data.gov) is supposed to be an “single easy to use online access point” to public data. The site is not released, but it is supposed to look like this.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, is also demanding to set data free, as he said in this speech in June last year;

“We’re going to set this data free.  In the first year of the next Conservative Government, we will find the most useful information in twenty different areas ranging from information about the NHS to information about schools and road traffic and publish it so people can use it.

This information will be published proactively and regularly – and in a standardised format so that it can be ‘mashed up’ and interacted with.”

Boris Johnson (Conservative), Mayor of London, has recently launched a prototype version of  London’s datastore (it will formally launch at January 29), and more than 200 data sets will be released. This is how Johnson explains the rational behind the datastore:

The US has led the way on this idea of setting their data free for anyone – students, campaigners, software developers – to use. Now it’s time for Britain to get up to speed and I want London, as the greatest city in the UK, to be at the forefront of this revolution, that will not only increase democracy, but also provide a potential money-spinner for the city’s hugely important software development sector. (via Vox Pubica)

Basically, they are all saying the same. So how can they win votes (when you exclude all other political topics) on their identical open data policy?

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Den svarte svanen

05/01/2010 · Leave a Comment

Jeg kunne begynt å skrive om alt det kule vi kommer til å bruke tiden og tastaturene våre til i 2010. «Brenn bøkene, lesebrettene tar over», «Facebook er sååå 2007» eller «Dine innspill til wiki-statsbudsjett 2011». Men historien har vist at mennesker er avsindig dårlige til å forutsi fremtiden; derfor skal ikke dette handle om 2010.

(To my international readers, this is an article I’ve written for the Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet about technology surprises from 2009, inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taled’s book The Black Swan. In my opinion, Google’s new collaborative tool, Google Wave represents such a black swan.)

De færreste spådde Sovjetunionens fall, Hitlers maktovertagelse og påfølgende verdenskrig, internettets spredning, den siste finanskrisen eller 11. september. Dette er hendelser som kan kalles svarte svaner. Det vil si at de er sjeldne og uforutsigbare, men likevel svært viktige.

Før 1790 var det ingen som klarte å forestille seg at det fantes svarte svaner, for alle observerte svaner var jo hvite. Helt til oppdagere rundt 1790 fant Cygnus atratus – svarte svaner – i Australia. Nassim Nicholas Taled skriver om dette i boken The Black Swan. Svarte svaner handler altså om vår manglende evne til å forutse overraskelser; de gjemmer seg i blindsonen vår, for så plutselig å se oss i hvitøyet.

Hvor mange ganger har vi ikke hørt at «vi må lære av våre feil» og at «historien gjentar seg»? Ifølge Taled hjelper det ikke så mye å kunne historien på rams når den svarte svanen lander i dammen vår. For historien åler seg ikke fremover – den hopper, uforutsigbart.

Når jeg ser tilbake på teknologiåret 2009, er det da mulig å se en svart svane eller en sjelden overraskelse blant alle hendelsene vi snakket og tastet om? Og er det mulig at en svart svane kan komme snikende – at vi ikke oppdager den med en gang?

I 2009 kjøpte enkelte av oss lesebrett for første gang (inkludert meg selv, som har gledet og irritert meg over Kindle). Enda flere har betalt for å «streame» musikk på den svenske tjenesten Spotify, både på nett og på mobil. Spørsmålet om datalagringsdirektivet, den svenske Pirate Bay-saken og de svenske FRA- og Ipred-lovene har satt datalagring, overvåkning og opphavsrett på dagsordenen, særlig blant bloggere.

Stortingsvalget i september lokket flere politikere ut i sosiale medier enn noen gang før, de sendte ut hele 117 000 twittermeldinger i månedene før valget, og «alle» var på Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogg og Origo.

I 2009 er en sky blitt mer enn et objekt på himmelen; nå handler det om å ha innholdet sitt tilgjengelig i nettskyen på internett (eksempelvis Google Documents, Flickr for bilder eller sikkerhetskopier på Dropbox). Slik kan vi jobbe hvor som helst, uavhengig av den lokale harddisken, såkalt cloud computing. Motstanden mot å offentliggjøre skattelistene ble enda større da flere store norske medieselskaper laget applikasjoner som gjorde at du kunne se hva Facebook-vennene dine tjente.

Er noe av dette svarte svaner? Trolig ikke. For meg er den svarteste svanen en arbeidsform, representert ved et program, nemlig Google Wave. Det var ekstremt opphausset og omringet av mye mystikk under beta-lanseringen i høst. Mange har prøvd verktøyet, som er en blanding av e-post, chat og wiki – altså dokument og samtale – og skuffelsen har vært stor blant de fleste. Google Wave er ennå uferdig, og kommer til å bli mye bedre, men samarbeids- og samhandlingstanken som ligger bak verktøyet fra de to ingeniørene Lars og Jens Rasmussen er grandios. Nøyaktig 20 år etter World Wide Webs spede begynnelse på Cern i 1989 kan bølgen til de to danskene få verden til å hoppe i en annen retning enn ventet.

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My favorite political cartoons

05/01/2010 · 3 Comments

Have you ever wondered how it is to live in a modern-day “1984″ society?

Canadian-French cartoonist Guy Delisle tells you all about it in this wonderful little book, Pyongyang about the sad and fucked-up country North Korea, what he calls a “hermit country”. I gave it to my husband this Christmas, and ended up reading it myself as well. Delisle’s work for different Asian animation studios are basis for this book, as well as his other book, Shenzhen, in addition to a book he has animated about Burma.

As Delisle says, George Orwell’s “1984″ is “the book that comes to mind for a stay in North Korea”. He stayed there for two months, and has drawn his everyday experiences with neat details, such as this observation: “In the 1990s, at the height of a famine that claimed some 2 million lives, North Korea was the world’s biggest client for Henessy Cognag”. Here’s another quote:

“Burried 90 meters underground, the Pyongyang subway can double as a bomb shelter in case of a nuclear attack. What better way to cultivate a constant sense of threat?”

Here are some other of my political cartoon favorites:

Do you have any other political cartoons to recommend?

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Basic elements of techpolitics

14/12/2009 · 2 Comments

So many try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to techpolitics in Europe – we need to get better at learning from each other, across borders!

I will explain more eventually, but here is my attempt to visualize (in a pretty nitty-gritty way) some of the basic elements of techpolitics. These elements are in some kind of way up for discussions in most western countries these days:

That was one of my thoughts as we in Origo organized a very interesting workshop in Oslo last week, Dugnadssamfunnet 2.0 (translated the Collaborative Society), in cooperation with the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform.

The purpose was to gather people interested in private and public innovation, digital participation, and new tech tools, get inspired from thought provoking speakers and discuss ideas in the workshop – essentially kind of a mini-PDF in Norway. I’ve written about it here and here (Google Translate from Norwegian).

Our speakers were Håkon Wium Lie, CTO at Opera Software, who talked about the importance of open and available data. The UK-based political innovator Simon Dickson spoke about the need for innovation in the way politicians communiate with citizens, while Nikki Timmermans explained how her company had organized innovation competitions for the Dutch Ministry of Culture since 2002. Olav Anders Øverbø told about how he has mapped public data in Norway and what he has found.

Afterwards in the workshop, we discussed these and more detailed techpolitics issues, and people got really engaged. I’m convinced we should have more kind of events like this in Norway/Oslo, and I’m absolutely convinced a Scandinavian Personal Democracy Forum could be doable.

But as Simon Dickson wrote in his blog after the event – “it’s the fact that we’re all seeing the same opportunities, and facing the same hurdles”, he wrote and was referring to the ongoing debate about the fight for access to public  maps, both in the UK and Norway.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, I went to the first European Personal Democracy Conference in Barcelona in November (which I wrote about here and here), and that conference is a clear proof that we need to learn more from each other. Despite language barriers and cultural difference, so many political environments are experiencing  similar discussions, and we need to learn from the best examples in different countries. And by having a more structured look at techpolitics, it gets easier to sort out good solutions.

Ex a ministry wants to test out some ideas – which are the best idea management systems and why? An organization wants go provide supporters with a better tool to self-organize and meet up – are there any other and better alternatives than meetup.com in your country? Origo.no would be the answer in Norway.

How can this model be improved? What other elements should be included? What examples would you like to add in each of the circles? Other ideas?

(A big nod to my friends at techPolitics.eu for a great company name:-)


→ 2 CommentsCategories: Politics · Social networks · tools
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Stuff I’m doing these days

03/12/2009 · 6 Comments

Dear friends and readers – huge apologies for my lack of  frequent updates on this blog this fall!

Photo: Bente Kalsnes

As I told you some months ago, I’ve moved back to Norway, Oslo, and I’ve started a new job as communication advisor at Origo, a social network and publishing platform. I love, love, love  it, but when the day is finished and the kids have gone to bed and I’ve done my last work things and read the articles my Twitter friends have suggested, it is already too late for blogging.

So therefore, a short update on stuff I’m working on these days:

  • Next week, Origo, in cooperation with the Ministry for Reform and Administration, is organizing a workshop/conference called Dugnadssamfunnet 2.o (my translation – the Collaborative Society – a workshop about innovation, digital tools and participation). Opera’s CTO Håkon Wium Lie is one of the speakers. Since I just came back from the always inspiring Personal Democracy Forum in Barcelona, this  feels like some sort of a mini-PDF for Norway:-) I wrote about the first European PDF conference (in Norwegian) here and here (in Norwegian).
  • I’ve recently talked with some contacts about bringing the Girl Geek Dinner concept to Oslo (something I’ve written about before). I’m sure it is doable, I just need to move some stuff (away) in my calendar.
  • I’m still writing a technology column for Morgenbladet and I will continue blogging occationally for the European PDF blog.
  • I’m updating the Norwegian Origo blog as well as  our Twitter account (I will return later with more details about the kind of work I do for Origo).
  • But mainly I’m waiting to go offline and start skiing into the Norwegian woods. The snow is still not here, but today it was -7 degrees…

Before the frost and ice came. Photo: Bente Kalsnes

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Følg sporene mine

03/12/2009 · 5 Comments

Vi avskyr overvåkning, men vi legger igjen flere digitale spor enn noensinne, de fleste frivillige.

(Another Norwegian article, this time from Morgenbladet a week ago. It’s about surveillance vs. digital footsteeps we voluntarily leave behind).

Dagens mest romantiske mail mottatt: «Jeg hadde tenkt til å fri, men så var du ikke online på MSN.»

Denne oppdateringen kunne jeg lese i twitterstrømmen min nylig. Det er søtt og morsomt, men også absurd. Absurd fordi det er bruddstykker av svært privat informasjon, og jeg kjenner ikke personene som har skrevet dette.

I 2009 er det tilsynelatende ikke grenser for hva vi forteller resten av verden om oss selv (vel, noen grenser har vi, men mer om det senere). Det er spesielt interessant siden 9. november var 20-årsfeiringen for Berlinmurens fall og protestbevegelsen mot datalagringsdirektivet aldri har vært større.

Foto: Bente Kalsnes

Mens jeg sitter og skriver dette, kan jeg gå inn på iPhonen min og applikasjonen Tweetie 2, og få en oversikt over folk som kvitrer i mitt nabolag, helt ned på gatenavn og husnummer. Vel å merke har disse personene valgt å oppgi sine geografiske posisjoner til Tweetie. Det er ikke fritt for at jeg skvatt til da jeg skjønte omfanget av denne applikasjonen. Keep reading →

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Hvem har tatt konsentrasjonen min?

03/12/2009 · 3 Comments

Gjør teknologien oss dummere? Nei, bare mer ukonsentrerte. Og forstyrrelsen har en pris. Det kan ta oss 15 minutter å komme tilbake til en krevende arbeidsoppgave etter en epost.


(Sorry to my international readers, but this is a Norwegian article I wrote some months ago about concentration, technology and social networks.
Denne artikkelen har stått på trykk i Strek Magasin og det var denne tweeten fra Petter Bae Brandtzæg i dag som minnet meg på at jeg ikke hadde lagt den ut. I forrige uke leste jeg denne svært tankevekkende bloggposten fra danah boyd om hva som skjer når Twitterveggen (eller back channel) på en konferanse blir hovedfokus (front channel), ikke foredragsholderen. Les også NRKbetas Eirik Solheims blogg post A smartphone moment.)

Hvor mange ganger har vi ikke hørt at vi blir så mye mer effektive med ny teknologi? Hvor mye mer får vi ikke gjort når vi både kan svare på epost, prate i telefon og gjøre ferdig den siste Excel-filen samtidig? All informasjonen vi trenger er bare et Google-søk unna. Og vi organiserer og systematiser dataene våre på så smarte måter at ny kunnskap åpenbarer seg. Men hvor mange ganger har vi ikke mistet konsentrasjonen av et pip, et pling, en vibrasjon?

Foto: Bente Kalsnes

Etter tretten år med intens bruk av internett og diverse kommunikasjonsdingser er det på tide å gjøre opp status for en teknologielsker som meg. Idet jeg skriver denne artikkelen, hører jeg på musikk via Spotify, har mobilen liggende ved siden av meg og får varslinger om nye eposter via pop-up-vinduet til Google Notifier. For øyeblikket har jeg skrudd av chatte-funksjonen i Gmail og Skype, samt Twitter, den avhengighetsskapende minibloggetjenesten som gir oss 140 tegn til å fortelle om livet og tankene våre. Viljestyrke skal til for å styre unna alle fristelsene fra sosiale medier. Obs, der kom en epost fra en ukjent person som vil være med i nettverket mitt på LinkedIn. Hvor var jeg?

Keep reading →

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A survey of Scandinavian Techpolitics

20/10/2009 · 11 Comments

Why aren’t there more techpolitic attempts in Scandinavia? Why isn’t there a Sunlight Foundation in Denmark, a MySociety in Sweden, a FarmSubsidy in Norway? (This blog post was also posted at Personal Democracy Forum’s European blog)

That’s something I’ve been wondering about, since the Scandinavian countries have among the highest internet usage in the world (in Finland, it will even become a legal right to have a one megabit broadband connection), high degree of openness in politics (ex, all municipalities and ministries in Norway have electronic mail journals that are available for the public. Margot Wallström, the Swedish Vice President in the European Commission, has a similar service, mail register) as well as populations with fairly high educational levels. In addition, we also know that social networks, such as Facebook, are extremely popular.

Some would argue that the more open a country’s own government and political culture is, the less likely you are to see bottom up efforts like MySociety or Sunlight. Is the distance between power-holders and the people so short and the possibilities for influence so many that we don’t need tools like TheyWorkForYou? I doubt so. Are the techpolitics enviroments in these countries too tiny to foster the kind of political digital innovations we’ve seen in the UK and the US? Maybe. We could also blame lack of good funding possibilities (except from the government), since we have few independent foundations similar to Sunlight.

We do see lots of examples of online communication between elected officials and the public, but not that many collaborative (problem solving) projects. However, there are some attempts, and we’ve gathered the most interesting cases for you. If you know of any other Scandinavian or Nordic political collaborative projects, let us know in the comment section.

Transparency/public data – efforts to make public data accessible to all on the Internet; free, searchable, clickable.

  • Digitaliser.dk (Denmark) – overview of public data resources in Denmark. The purpose is the encourage the use of public data in new ways. Similar to data.gov.
  • Opengov.se (Sweden) – overview of public data resources in Sweden. The goal is to highlight the benefits of open access to government data and explain how this is done in practice. Similar to data.gov.

Collaboration/ political ideas – tools to make it easier to cooperate and solve political problems.

  • Ideoffensiv.dk (Denmark) – portal for political ideas in Skanderborg municipality. People can present ideas, discuss them, vote, and follow how the municipality is dealing with the political ideas from the public.
  • GataMi -Tromsø municipality (Norway) – report a problem in your neighbourhood, ex a pothol or a broken street light. Similar to FixMyStreet.
  • Malmøinitiativet (Sweden) – portal for political ideas in Malmö municipality. Suggest a political idea, and get support from you idea from the local community.
  • Yr.no (Norway) – weather data presented in a user-friendly way, based on public data. Project developed by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
  • Hendelseskart (Norway) – political event map from the local newspaper Asker og Bærum Budstikka. Political events from the past 3 months are marked on the map (in addition to crime, accidents, fires).
  • Maktbasen (Norway) – the “Power database”, a mashup with data on national and local politicians, their economic interests as well as their voting records.
  • Fakta først (Norway) – blog and reasearch project about public data.
  • HvemStemmerHvad (Denmark) – overview of Danish national politicians’ voting record as well as their absence, starting from 2001.
  • Folkets Ting (Denmark) – debate, comment or vote on current law proposals or political speaches.
  • Riksdagsmonitor (Sweden) – monitor Swedish national politicians’ voting record and absence.
  • Bliv Hørt (Denmark) – digital hearing in the Copenhagen municipality (thanks to HvemStemmerHva for the link)
  • Ungdomskriminalistet (Denmark) – ideas for how to reduce youth crime in (suggest ideas, discuss, vote) Denmark, started by the political party Venstre (the Liberals) (thanks to HvemStemmerHva for the link)
  • Danmarksdebatten (Denmark – dead?) – digital dialog platform for municipalities and citizens, initiated by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (thanks to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen for the link)

New ways of communicating between politicians and citizens – blogs written by elected officials and bureacrates.

  • Bærumbeta (Norway) – blog about communication policy in Bærum municipality.
  • Ordførerbloggen (Norway) – the mayor’s blog in Kongsvinger municipality.
  • BetaTrondheim (Norway) – blog about web 2.0 possilities and challenges in Trondheim municipality.
  • Departementene og sosiale medier (Norway) – blog about how to utilize social networks and web 2.o tools in a ministry.
  • Origo.no (Norway) – online community and publishing tool used by 1067 politicians (all the names are confirmed) in Norway. The Norwegian Labour party has developed their own community, MyLabourParty, on the site. (Disclaimer, the writer works as a communication advisor for Origo)

Do you know any other example? Help us update this list in the comment section! (I’m updating as people suggest more links, and add attributes in parathesis).

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Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize – the social media reactions from Norway

14/10/2009 · 6 Comments

This year’s selection of the Nobel Peace Prize started an online outcry the second it was announced. For many people, including the recipient himself, is was a shock that hear that president Barack Obama was awarded. And Norwegians were among those who reacted most strongly against the decision from the Norwegian Nobel committee. Not because Norwegians dislike or disapprove of Obama, rather opposite. During the election campaign, 79 percent of Norwegians prefered Obama rather than the Republican candidate, John McCain.

But awarding him the Nobel Prize after just 10 months in office have been hard to swallow, even for Norwegians.

One of the first tweets that circulated was this: “Obama had been in office in 11 days when the nomination ended” (my translation). And as all social media topics these days, the decision got its own “fail” tag, #fredsprisfail (PeacePrizeFail)

The reactions have been raging from people demanding that Torbjørn Jagland, the leader of the Nobel Prize committee, should resign, to people demanding Obama should not accept the prize. Jagland was recently elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe. One blogger has written a formal complaint to the committee on his blog, and a Swedish blogger, Åsa Linderborg, has suggested to dissolve the prize all together.

Politicians such as the social media active Bård Vegar Solhjell (minister of Education), has speculated on Twitter whether the prize will hurt Obama at home or not, and written a huge question mark after Obama’s name in a blog post.

43 percent of Norwegians meant it was right to give the peace prize to Obama, while 38 percent opposed it. 19 percent had not made up their mind according to a recent survey by Synovate, but if you check the online polls, the numbers are opposite, such as in VG.no. It is also characteristic that the young ones are most critical against the committee’s choice, among the 18 -25 years old, only 25 percent are positiv to Obama as a peace prize winner, 42 percent are negative. Among those over 6o years, 58 percent meant that the decision was right.

It has become political incorrect in Norway to say that Nobel committee made the right decision, according to this blogger (who actually supports the decision). One of the commentators in the same tread is even ashamed to be Norwegian because of the committee’s decision.

For more international discussions surrounding the Nobel committee and their decision, follow the Twitter search for Nobel - as you can see, it is full of jokes, both about Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize.  The Nobel Peace Prize is also a hot topic at the Swedish blog search engine Twingly. Here is the only article where one of the committee member have been interviewed; “He did not seem very happy” said Inger Mari Ytterholm about Obama when he met the press after the Nobel announcement.

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Velgerne vant årets digitale valgkamp

11/09/2009 · Leave a Comment

Det er mye vi kan si om politikernes internettinnsats, men la oss glemme det nå.

(Denne artikkelen står på trykk i dagens utgave av Morgenbladet. Fordi man ikke kan diskutere på Morgenbladets sider, legger jeg den ut for kommentarer her. Apology to my international readers, this is an article I’ve written for the weekly Morgenbladet about the digital election campaigns in Norway and how voters have participated.)

La oss glemme Frp og Christian Ingebrigtsens valgkampsang «Fremtiden i dag» på YouTube, la oss glemme Lars «Jeg er ikke på Facebook, jeg er på Stortinget» Sponheim, og Dagfinn Høybråtens nitriste KrF-blogg. La oss rett og slett glemme politikerne i noen få sekunder, og deres mer eller mindre tunge satsning på ulike plattformer på internett – Facebook, blogg, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr eller Origo. For det spennende med denne valgkampen er samtalene vi har hatt – velgerne imellom – og hvordan vi har overbevist hverandre og endret mening.

Skal vi tro på en svært interessant meningsmåling som InFact har utført for Valgpanelet.no, så har hver fjerde voksne person i Norge skiftet mening som følge av noe de har lest på en nettdebatt eller blogg. I den yngste aldersgruppen, de mellom 18 og 24 år, var tallene enda høyere; hele 51 prosent oppga at de hadde endret mening. Og hør, det kommer mer: Frp-sympatisører er de mest aktive nettbrukerne, 32 prosent av disse oppgir å lese politiske debatter på nettsider eller blogger daglig eller ukentlig, mens bare tolv prosent av Venstres støttespillere gjør det samme. Venstre er dårligst av alle partiene i denne sammenheng. Som vi vet fra før, er menn nesten dobbelt så aktive som kvinner i de politiske diskusjonene på nettet (24 versus 15 prosent).

Tidligere i sommer skrev jeg at «Frp mangler internettkoden» fordi jeg mente Frp hang langt etter de andre partiene på nett (utenom etternølerne Sp og KrF). Jeg mente partiet undervurderte velgerne sine og deres internettaktivisme, og InFacts tall kan tyde på at jeg hadde rett.

Mens halvparten av velgerne bestemmer seg og ombestemmer seg etter å ha diskutert på blogg eller i nettdebatter, oppgir majoriteten av de spurte at nettet er den minst viktigste informasjonskanalen – et merkelig paradoks, om du spør meg. TV er fremdeles den viktigste politiske informasjonskanalen, foran papiraviser, radio og nettaviser. Kunnskapsminister Bård Vegar Solhjell har allerede påstått at valget i 2009 kan være det siste der tv er viktigere enn internett. Jeg tror han har rett, og det underbygges av tallene om hvordan vi deler politisk innhold på nett, som for eksempel en YouTube-video. Nok en gang er Frp-erne blant de ivrigste delerne (21 prosent), bare slått av Rødt (43 prosent), mens KrF holder godsakene for seg selv (bare 3 prosent deler politisk innhold på nett).

De sosiale mediene har gjort valgkampene mer underholdende fordi vi er med. Vi skravler på nett og noen hører på. Vi er så mye med at det belgiske selskapet Attentio er blitt hyret inn av Valgpanelet for å måle buzz-nivået i den norske bloggosfæren for å finne ut hvilke partier og politikere bloggerne snakker om. Da dette ble skrevet, var Frp det partiet flest bloggere skrev om.

Teknologien har visket bort de tradisjonelle skillene mellom det private og det offentlige, og som Jonathan Shaw skriver i Harvard Magazine: det holder ikke bare å skille mellom det private og det offentlige. Nå har vi både det private, det offentlige og det veldig, veldig offentlige.

Valg09 har også lært meg å sette pris på det politiske intimitetstyranniet sosiale medier har åpnet for. Takket være Twitter vet jeg at Venstres stortingskandidat, juristen Abid Q. Raja, slanker seg, at han har gått ned 15 kilo på ett år og at han løp de syv kilometerne rundt Dragsjøen på 46 minutter forrige søndag.

Raja har allerede lovet på Twitter: «Om æ kjem inn løper jeg neste år på 40 blank!» Godt valg!

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