DemTech: Our Blog
What Does Radio Sound Like in Sudan?
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What does radio sound like in Sudan? A cacophony, in the best possible way. The many competing stations on the Juba FM dial are a sort of cacophony of democracy, where everyone has a voice and an opinion and wants to share it with the world.
… Read MoreKenyan Citizens Monitor with Mobile aka “A4B2G1H1”*
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Detailed information about Election Day can be collected from thousands of observers in many ways given the need for accuracy, speed, minimized costs, and taking into account the particular communications infrastructure and organizational…
Read MoreMoments of Opportunity: Tech in Closed Societies
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In recent years, partly in response to the US State Department’s focus on internet freedom, we have seen increased interest in applying technology to closed societies to create more political space and…
Read MoreCrisis Mapping for the Masses
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Crowdsourcing is a really useful methodology for lowering the barrier to participation in reporting on events in real time, even though it isn’t a silver bullet, as I’ve commented.
Unfortunately…
Read MoreThe Wisdom of Crowds, or Why Justin Bieber is Off to North Korea
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Crowdsourcing is hot. Empowering everyday citizens to take small steps and have powerful impact through collective action is one of the most fascinating revolutions permitted by the Internet. The barrier to participation has dropped. Now anyone…
Read MoreCircumvention Tools: Not a Democratic Transition Strategy
There tends to be a lot of focus on the role of circumvention, mobile and social media tools in democratic struggles taking place in closed societies that tend to overstate their potential and impact in many cases. While these tools and…
Read MoreCitizen Election Monitoring: Demonstrated Accountability
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NDI’s work with citizen election monitoring groups provides an illustrative example of combining new technologies, effective methodologies and strong organizations to create positive political outcomes. A common approach to citizen election…
Read MoreCreating an Environment for Political Reform
An important component of success for activists struggling for democratic reform in closed societies involves the political environment in which they live and conduct their work. The challenges faced by activists in autocratic nations are immense…
Read MoreTechnology and the Struggle for Democracy in Closed Societies
So who has the upper hand when it comes to using technology to further their goals in authoritarian countries, the good guys or the bad guys? It is often said that in the early days of the Internet that many believed the technology alone will…
Read MoreICT at Work: Afghanistan Election Mapping and Uganda Citizen Hotline
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Recent NDI programs demonstrate the important role technology can play in supporting fragile democracies.
Afghanistan Elections
In the aftermath of last summer’s flawed Afghanistan presidential election we created…
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