How the Internet Helps Breed Participation in Democracy

There's a neat new site called Change.org. (Overview from Techcrunch).

As I understand it from looking at the site myself, and from the Techcrunch article, it is essentially a social networking site with some unique features.

It is meant to be used to participate in groups, or "Changes", around political or similar causes. Much like Myspace and Facebook, users can post all sorts of material, such as pictures and video.

It goes even further than that though, in that it is now a platform for "citizen lobbying". While I personally have reservations about lobbying, I do see how it would be important for everyday people to take part in it instead of leaving corporations as the sole major lobbyists.

Lobbying has resulted in large corporations playing a larger role in our democracy than normal people, which is absurd. Democracy is supposed to be "for the people", not for the corporations. Change.org aims to change that (pardon the pun).

The site is now allowing members of "Changes" to pool money together to support a lobbying effort. This enables large groups of people to make large political donations and counteract the massive lobbying efforts of corporations. People who contribute money to "changes" will be able to vote on which charity or politician is best able to accomplish their goals, and then the money will be contributed to the top candidate(s), with a small 1% being retained by Change.org to sustain the website.

Members of a "Change" can also directly participate in lobbying on behalf of the change.

It is sites like this, as well as websites not necessarily dedicated to political commentary and participation (such as Youtube, Facebook and Myspace) that demonstrate how the Internet is wrenching control back from the rich and placing it in the hands of the people, where it belongs.