Category: Social Media

Back From re-publica 2013 In Berlin, Germany

I am back from re-publica 2013 in Berlin, Germany

From May 6 to May 8, 2013, I attended re:publica 2013, the biggest Internet conference in Germany. It took place at the Station, a former trainyard in Berlin—quite an impressive location, I have to say.

It was my first time at re:publica and I volunteered as a stage assistant for one shift to earn my ticket for the whole duration of the event.

I am still sorting all my materials and ideas, but I am planning on writing a few more blog posts on my impressions in the coming days. Stay tuned!

 

Reddit Users Edit Logos Of Campaign Donors Onto Politicians

Reddit Users Edit Logos Of Campaign Donors Onto Politicians

Social news website Reddit comes up with a creative, satirical take on the legal bribery of campaign finance in America.

Money talks in American politics. So much so, that numerous contemporary observers and respondents to polls have described the current form of campaign financing as legal bribery, especially after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling of 2009 has made the system even more obscure.

Many Americans citizens of various political persuasions today see their political system as corrupt, dominated by a small number of large corporations and wealthy individuals who legally buy politicians of both major parties with campaign donations to protect their interests.

However diverse political opinions may be among the larger population, political representatives as a class tend to respond to those who fill their campaign coffers. To a large extent, this also includes the current President Barack Obama, who, despite his progressive campaign rhetoric, has appointed many former corporate executives and lobbyists who have in their interest anything but regulating the industries they themselves are products of.

DIY Transparency on Reddit

On the social news website Reddit, users have come up with an idea to make the influence of money more transparent to the average person. As the Huffington Post reports, they suggest that politicians wear the logos of their corporate campaign donors, just like Nascar race car drivers’ overalls are plastered all over with sponsors’ logos.

Because this is unlikely to happen, the Reddit community has taken to image editing software to create montages of heads of political representatives and overalls full of the logos of campaign donors (images are linked in the Huffington Post article below).

While this may seem like a satirical Internet meme that will never get any traction in the ‘real world,’ the idea behind it is rather serious. If money has such a corrupting influence on the political system, should it not be made transparent whose bidding elected officals will do?

There are websites such as opensecrets.org that attempt to track campaign donations to elected officials. However, these resources are sometimes difficult to navigate for the average person.

Update (March 28, 2013):

A recent example of corporate influence on American politicians, this time on the Democrats’ side: President Obama has signed a spending bill that includes what critics call protection of the genetically modified organism (GMO) manufacturer Monsanto against future litigation in case that GMOs might be proven to contain health risks.

Read more:

“Reddit Provides DIY Way To NASCAR-ize Lawmakers, Make Them ‘Wear’ Logos Of Financial Backers.” (Nick Wing, Huffington Post, 2013/03/21)

OpenSecrets.org – Money in Politics