Thursday, January 28, 2016

How Taiwan activists use technology

http://www.mobilisationlab.org/blooming-digital-democracy-taiwan-sunflower-movement/#.VqpWVtDGBo1

"Taiwan has been at the forefront of digital democratization for some time. In 2012, Taiwanese netizens created alternative, crowdsourced .g0v (a number 0 where an O would otherwise be) versions of Government websites where they released data in formats that helped people more easily understand what government ministries were doing.

Audrey Tang (Isis Kang/CC BY-NC-ND)
'Most of the technologies we have deployed in Taiwan were neutral; they were intended to encourage people to talk, that’s all. We had a very strong code of neutrality,' said Audrey Tang, a self-professed 'conservative anarchist,' and member of g0v.tw, now a civic movement aiming for true, participatory self-government.
Youth leaders, g0v.tw, and other hacktivists all came together last year when the Government’s move to limit public debate on a trade deal with China angered citizens upset at the blatant disregard for democracy and potentially adverse economic impacts. In just a few days, this morphed into a mass movement.
Technology played a key role from the very beginning. During the movement, a central web portal was used as a common entry point for information on the movement. A host of mostly open-source, hosted tools were used in the portal to network, engage, and empower activists."

It's good to look around and see what other people are doing.

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