New Media
geplaatst op: 27-09-09 | tags: crowdfunding, kiva, microfinance, Obama, social finance
In 2005 social finance arises from the web 2.0-era. Participatory web projects offer a broad spectrum of opportunities. Banking 2.0 is “a way for people to lend and borrow directly with each other online[…]”. You can own a small piece of a footballclub at myfootballclub.co.uk. “You are invited to join members from over 80 countries who own Ebbsfleet United and vote on all key decisions from team selection to financial budgets. Membership costs £35 annually.”. Obama raised an enormous amount of money online and at Sellaband.com you can invest in a band.
For me, the most interesting form of crowdfunding is the microloan-service of Kiva.org. The website of Kiva.org is filled with entrepreneurs from all around the globe (especially the poorest country’s) in need of a small amount of money to start a business. For instance I can loan 25 dollars to a fishing group in Uganda. Together with another 55 other loaners there is 4000 dollars raised, which is enough to buy nets, boats and rods. The fisherman’s will pay our loan back in 5 terms. The last term ends at 1 March 2010. In March I can decide to re-lend or withdraw the funds. Read the rest of this entry »
New Media
geplaatst op: 20-09-09 | tags: encyclopedic, hijab tax, Wikipedia
While I was creating and editing the “Hijab Tax”-entry, I noticed that Wikipedia is still ‘just’ an encyclopedia, in spite of its mission;
As an encyclopedia building project, Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge: all of topics covered by a conventional print encyclopedia plus any other “notable” (therefore verifiable by published sources) topics, which are permitted by unlimited disk space.
The hijab tax is a proposal for a new tax of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The hijab is, according to Geert Wilders, a contamination of landscape and anti-woman. That’s why he proposes a tax of 1000 euro’s a year for wearing a hijab. The hijab tax seems to be political framing, and not serious at all. (My guess is that Wilders aimed to get people talking about the word “kopvoddentax”, which is a humiliating term.) On the other hand, I couldn’t answer the question ‘why should it be excluded from the summary of all human knowledge?’ For that reason I decided to create a Kopvoddentax entry in Dutch and a Hijab Tax-entry in de English version of Wikipedia. Read the rest of this entry »
Boekrecensies
geplaatst op: 13-09-09 | tags: bookreview, new media politics, Political Campaigning
The brand new (31th of August 2009 according to Amazon) book “Political Campaigning on the Web” is a bundle of essays around the relatively new field of political campaigning in new media in its broadest sense. The book contains a broad spectrum of different sides of campaigning. Sigrid Baringhorst wrote the first chapter, which places the field of political campaigning on the web in its historical context. From there the book takes you through a bunch of interesting topics and analyses, from political party campaigns to web activism and petitions. Those articles end in a conclusion with interesting proposals for further research. Read the rest of this entry »
