Felix Cohen (London, oD): Blair's much publicised attack on the media (opens pdf document), commented on in these pages, criticises, among many other things, "new forms of communication", which he once hoped would help bypass traditional media, but have turned out to be "even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five". While everyone at openDemocracy is worried about how Blair found out about our conspiracy multiplier, there is a wider point: he was right.
Right, that is, to suggest that new forms of communication can bypass traditional media. Example? mysociety. They are doing more than perhaps anyone else to construct this bypass, primarily by developing a number of brilliant, free tools that enable people to participate much more fully in the democratic process. These include Neighbourhood Fix-it, where communities can take action on their local environs, PledgeBank, a tool to enable collaborative action and overcome the 'action threshold' of Britain's apparently apathetic voter, who are also given the opportunity to explain their non-voting position by NotApathetic. They are responsible for the e-petitions site, hosted by the government, which gained notoriety over the road-pricing debacle; many commentators accusing the petitions of being populist or having high barriers to entry - victims of their own success, perhaps?
But mysociety's biggest triumphs have been their very simple, direct communication tools between voters and those who represent them. TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem and HearFromYourMP are all sites that allow voters to observe how their MP behaves, contact them, and hear back; abilities that are vital for participative democracy. These ingenious websites prove that it is possible to use the web for genuinely worthwhile, democratic means.
