Peer Assist Lebanon: How to encourage youth participation in elections using social media?

Jordan: municipal elections coming up in 2010 in Lebanon

Youth engagement in elections, Catholic relief service grant

Help engage youth through alternative media

A lot of alternative media growing since main media very political

Raise awareness, engage youth

Want to identify 15 villages around the country, multi and mono-sectarian

Will develop youth platform

National level voting campaign, something like: "think and vote! Yallah, vote!"

Also want to develop local, village level campaigns about rights and responsibilities

Municipal elections in Lebanon are usually not run on issues, but normally based on family blocks and sectarian basis

Electoral reform law

Currently 21, voting age down to 18 year olds, that’s why youth initiative so important

18-25 main target group, 16-25 are meant to be involved

In Lebanon even youth at young age are politicized

What social media exchange does: does a lot of training in social media, how is it mean for empowerement, community empowerement , how to better use the internet

Asked to come in:

·         For media training

·         Also another project with online forum

·         Develop survey of voters, voter perception survey of the electoral process, will be done with pen and paper, but also electronic component and also want to present it electronically

o   Wanna push further, use technology to viualize data

o   That’s where we want your help

1.       What tech enabled survey technologies exist?

2.       How can we visualize it?

Example of Jordan, using GIS to map communities?

Cost of internet used to be $35, now $10 a month

250 000 of Lebanese have broadband plus all the people abroad, make the biggest bulk of internet activity, 20 million Lebanese globally, 4 million in Lebanon, can vote if come back to vote

1.5 million mobile phone users

Since 1930s no census done, but due to sectarian problems don’t want to update it

Lessons learned: last conflict in 2006 SMS worked very well

Facebook 600 000 users in Lebanon, could get the numbers from facebook (Rob lives a block from it)

Twitter, all of Middle East only 12, 000

Can there be a game to map neighborhood, open street map on facebook, Jessica works with open street map in Beirut, people seem very interested

Can mix open steet map with Ushihidi

Use balloons, but how do maps feedback into electoral process?

Could hand out open street maps for people to walk around and add information

Use it as a facebook app, do something which resembles a game, ask them to map

Specify where information is coming from on day of elections

Campus risk played on campuses around the US

Risk: game of world domination , having to persuade people to sign up with your group, within a week got 40% of their campus to join! Pretty successful

Survey on facebook, on mobile

What’s the objective? Not about collecting data, but getting youth engaged

Mapping people’s allegiance sounds like a terrifying idea

60% of pregnant women in the US use it: Johnson Baby Centre: link you to a community of other people who are in the same month, share what is happening to you with others, more like a self-development tool

More like Obama campaign

Link it to different stages in election

Two different things: survey and based on that survey use it to design to target that youth

CRS, NAM, + already doing the survey, but has an electronic component

Yesterday talked about incentivizing, using it first for a neutral  issue, later use that, act of voting, X-factor, popular!

“Mapping party”: can add things to printed out geo-referenced open street map

Suktel.com: they are here, offer something to get something back, website plus mobile, give in data and get something back…

Connect searches of facebook status updates with another website

Last election: lpmonitoring.com, had a lot of blank voting last election because unhappy with all of them…

Egypt/Algeria: had digital war over facebook after football match

Ruling party of Egypt getting nervous about candidate on facebook who gets massive support, groups, fan, spreading the word on facebook

Why create something new? Why don’t you join the existing groups and monitor them, use these results

Virgina tech, fb allowed community to deal with shooting

Egypt: get them to engage in politics, add them on fb as your friend…

Where do young people hang out? Village squares, coffee shops, malls

Story corps: interview each other, tell stories, could map these interviews on a map

In winter, in villages populations much smaller, because people move to the city

Ourstories: record interviews on mobile and then upload , googleaps, then gets tagged, put online on map

Al Jazeera’s use something very similar for their reporters, Shozu

EAS: emergency assistance service, OPEN SOURCE, there is a video about it, report will be launched on Tuesday,

Geochat over SMS, group texting, can see messages on the map

Cross checking, Al Jazeera needs to double check things, cross reference

-“allow crowd to do its thing but still keep credibility”

The simpler the better, one simple question: like by when will you give birth, Johnson Johnson idea

WATWAT (Middle Eastern Twitter) has 25 000 users

Youth parlament, how can you connect it to technology?

youth parliaments exists in Lebanon, one participant here was youth shadow government minister for IT

Model UN also exist, all the political parties also have campus groups, campus elections directly connected to national elections and big parties run, public university: but even American University, elections are huge and can be very polarizing and violent

If you write app and people and they join it on facebook, can access their info, profile info

In Lebanon, ppl get on Twitter, just to update facebook status, since can’t do it directly, idea: build a facebook app allowing people to update fb status via text messaging:

Some participants tsaid it's easy: we could do that, even get started today! that way have people already engaged before elections.