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Gaurav Mishra
The Story behind Vote Report India: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring
As India's 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives, in the month long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha, we are sure to see the usual controversies that surround general elections in India: the illegal use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, and allegations of violence, intimidation and other irregularities during the elections.
Vote Report India provides a platform to Indian citizens to report such incidents. Users contribute direct SMS, email, and web reports on violations of the Election Commission's Model Code of Conduct. The platform will then aggregate these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map. The information will also be made available via email, and RSS feed, and SMS, so that concerned parties can track the irregularities in the election process easily.
At one level, Vote Report India will serve as a critical initiative aimed at nurturing transparency and accountability in the Indian election process. At another level, the platform will provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the elections.
The talk will describe the story of how the team behind Vote Report India, which is spread across three continents, came together.
http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/the-story-behind-vote-report-india-citizen-powered-election-monitoring/
About Gaurav Mishra:
Gaurav Mishra is the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for the academic year 2008-09 at Georgetown University. He is leading research on social media in the BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- and teaching a graduate course at Georgetown University on "Social Media in Business, Development and Government" in Spring 2009. Gaurav is frequently quoted in the Indian and international press on how the social web is changing media, business and society in India, including its role in events like the Mumbai terrorist attack and the upcoming national elections. Gaurav is also the co-founder of Vote Report India, a collaborative citizen-powered election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.
