The World Information Access Project reports that 64 citizen around the world unaffiliated with major media companies have been arrested for their blogging activities. Average jail time is 15 months. Some bloggers were jailed for as little as a few hours, while others were jailed for as long as eight years.

According to the report, the Middle East and Asia are the two areas with the most arrests. Egypt arrested 14 bloggers since 2003, China arrested 12 bloggers, and Iran arrested eight bloggers.

Most of the bloggers arrested are young-ish, varying in age from 21 to 45.

WIA used Lexis Nexis and Google News to accumulate their research. They only recorded stories reported in online media, which means that countless other arrested bloggers are not included in their research. This invisible group is, perhaps, the one that matters most — untrackable but sitting behind bars somewhere for the crime of posting something online.

Check out the analysis and charts and graphs.

Porter Bayne is the creator of a new online community called Ameritocracy.com, a site that allows users to read what politicians actually say, comment on their speeches, and rate the comments of other people. Think of it as a type of fact-checking site for people who don’t have lots of free time to read candidate speeches for themselves.

The site is in testing right now, but you can try it out by using beta invitation code ipdi.

Bayne and I spoke last week about his site, good governance, and bringing people together to talk about politics:

Who are you?

My friend Iris and I have been collaborating since January 2007 to design this thing.  She’s a brilliant creative from upstate New York and has a pretty leftist worldview.  I’m from Texas originally and have always been fairly conservative, including a die-hard stint in the College Republicans for awhile.  I razz her for being a liberal socialist hippie and I get accused of being evil on occasion.  It’s pretty fun.

James, our CTO, was a medic in the army in the late 80s, stationed in Latin America.  As he says, “I’d wake up and read in American papers that I supposedly wasn’t there doing what I was doing.”  Bobby and I met pretty randomly - online! - back in 2000 when I wrote for a small computer gaming site, and Brian - who’s had a huge impact on how we think about our system technically, brings the pragmatism of Indiana to the team.  So, we very much bring an end-user perspective on politics and media to the table.

What inspired you to create Ameritocracy?

I think each of us involved in the project had our own light bulb experience.  For me, I originally came up with a similar concept in 2004 when I was frustrated with how so many of my friends/colleagues were repeating misinformation straight from campaigns’ mouths or their favorite radio show, and they didn’t trust information from the “other side.”  Then one day my sister, who reads voraciously and has as many degrees as my right hand has digits, said “I just don’t know how you stay up on political information”.  That made it real to me: people just don’t have time to keep up.

How will Ameritocracy help solve the information overload problem that so many American citizens have?

Isn’t it something that civic literacy has declined since the web and the 24 hour cable news station became the norm?  It boils down to time and trust.  What we do is allow users to report brief quotes from politicians, pundits, and organizations, with sources cited.  Users can then write short responses that support, challenge, or simply add context to the quote.  Sources must be cited.  Based on the quote and user-written responses, community members rate the quote itself for how credible the speaker is being, and how much the quote’s content matters to them.  So the content is quick to read and engage.  And the ratings allow the community to generate reputation for users as well as the politicians, pundits, and organizations they are discussing.

Your site seems to rely on the ideas of collaboration within an online community. Can collaboration/the wisdom of crowds/crowd sourcing actually create change on a policy level? How do you think Ameritocracy and other sites may impact the political environment?

I think we’re already seeing it.  YouTube|CNN debates are a step in the right direction.  The Obama campaign clearly benefitted from multiple aspects of collaboration and crowd sourcing.  The World Economic Forum just opened up with a YouTuber addressing the crowd.
So yes… if Ameritocracy can help educate and engage more people with better information, then we can impact policy.  According to a report from the Pew Center for People and the Press, the higher someone’s civic literacy is, the more they want to learn and the more valuable they think it is to be involved in their community.  That means change in whether people vote, how they vote, and then what other steps they might take to be involved in their community.

What goal would you like Ameritocracy to accomplish in the next two years? What about long term?

Our blue-sky goal is to get regular people much more engaged and influential in important sociopolitical dialog at local, state, and national levels.  By “regular,” I simply mean those of us lacking the time or inclination to read news and editorial pieces a few hours a day.

We want to be the place people turn to check something out quickly, either by coming to the site or seeing it in a widget out in the wild.  Moreover, we want people interacting, knowing they have a place where their participation does make an impact, even if it’s just casting a quick vote.  And we hope to be a favorite, efficient resource for journalists and researchers.
We’ll be the place people come to report, rate, and respond to politicians, the media, and other organizations.

Interestingly, the nefarious looking folks with flip cameras at the back of your next campaign event or town hall meeting might not be all that . . . nefarious.

Case in point: Chris Shank is a Maryland State Delegate from Washington County (he’s also an alum of our Graduate School of Political Management and a professor in program). When the Herald-Mail editorial page slammed Delegate Shank on May 12, supporters didn’t just write in to the editor supporting Shank – one of them also posted video.

Rex Harrill, a resident of Haggerstown, took his digicam to a speaking appearance held by Delegate Shank the next day, uploaded six minutes of video onto YouTube, and included a link in his letter. In the video, Delegate Shank discusses his role as a public servant. The video isn’t perfect, but it feels patriotic and authentic in ways that a typical political message can no longer convey.

I asked Delegate Shank about the impact this one little video made on his role as a state legislator:

I was fascinated by the integration of old-media and new-media. For years, we’ve been relying on letters to the editor to provide campaign messaging in down-ballot races. Here was something new, however, that provided a new media tool to provide un-filtered, no cost, messaging directly to my constituents. It also bypassed the negative messaging that the newspaper was hitting me with. The message from my constituent that was so refreshing was –”see for yourself.”

I also asked him about the rather – ahem – small viewership. When I tuned in this week, the video only had 50 views. Can you really change the district with 50 years?

The fact that only 51 people viewed it really wasn’t that big of a deal, I have a pretty small district. The whole episode has provided me with the desire to utilize the technology far more to connect with my constituents. I’ve always run as a grassroots guy and I see how this could really help facilitate that connection pretty easily.

Couple this response with my interview with Ric Cantrell from Utah a few weeks ago, and I can see that we are beginning to build a portfolio on how online communications is taking off on a state level.

I ran across an interesting article in The New Republic about Jonathan Schilling - a man who monitors HRC’s Wikipedia page.  Near the end of the piece, the author does a bit of interviewing with another Wikipedia defender who monitors BHO’s page.  Both pages are long and full of references, but considering the viscous nature of this primary fight, I am surprised that only Obama’s page is locked.  Have the Wikipedia vandals already decided she won’t win and thus its not even worth vandalizing her page anymore?

I am quite impressed with the amount of time and energy these guys have devoted to their respective causes.   They have tasked themselves as editors of a system designed to not have a single editor.  I do not envy them; keeping the pages clean cannot be easy, especially with the heated primary we have right now.

MoveOn.org just announced its ad contest for the 2008 cycle.  In 2004 their contest was for negative Bush ads, but this year they are wanting pro Obama ads.  It’s being run off of ObamaIn30Seconds.org and I suspect it will produce some great entries.  They received some quality ads for their 2004 contest, and with the fervent Obamania that exists, I suspect we will see more excellent entries.  Their list of judges includes quite the crew - Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Russell Simons, Julia Stiles, Adrian Grenier, and Moby to name but a few.

Just recently, Professor Adam Green’s Politics and the Internet class in the GW School of Media and Public Affairs hosted Justine Lam, the online director for Ron Paul 2008. Lam, who will be speaking on Alex Hunsucker’s panel on building grassrooots momentum at the upcoming Politics Online Conference, appeared with Jonathan Bydlak, the finance director for Paul’s campaign. In response to a student’s question about which candidate has most effectively leveraged new media in this election cycle, Bydlak and Lam opined on Obama’s use of the Internet.

The video has drawn widespread attention in the blogosphere so far, most notably on DailyKos, where some readers have taken to chastising Lam and Bydlak for implying that Barack Obama’s campaign was too “top-down” in its use of the Internet.

Many have pointed out that while this may seem like a legitimate criticism, Obama’s campaign has ultimately been more effective in the long run with its online strategy. It seems fair. When I spent my winter break in New Hampshire volunteering for the Clinton campaign, I remember thinking before the day of the primary that Ron Paul was a force not to be underestimated. Of course, January 8th came and Ron Paul failed to make the impact that I had anticipated.

Despite all of the hype, Paul’s online army of sorts did not translate into any significant amount of votes for the libertarian 10-term congressman from Texas. But in the aftermath of the failure of support to materialize, the online component of the campaign (arguably the campaign itself) seems to have fizzled even further, with the Los Angeles Times blog reporting that Paul’s online supporters:

have been less evident, effusive and at times abusive in the last couple of weeks.

Lam and Bydlak’s point that the Obama camp’s use of the Internet is “ironic” in that it centralizes operations that should remain decentralized (i.e., donation, volunteer coordination, and event information functions) via the Internet is bound to provoke a spirited discussion because the citizen-based model evidently did not produce the results that many had predicted.

One of the most thought-provoking soundbytes came when Ron Paul said:

I could not stop this movement if I tried.

That, to me, raises the question of “What is the nature of the movement that he could not stop?” A well-organized campaign with an effective online strategy? Or a grassroots movement that, while admirable in its intensity and passion, has failed to deliver votes?

Perhaps there is a way to integrate a strategy that combines the decentralized elements of Paul’s operation but still sufficiently organizes supporters. To me, it is certainly not altogether inconceivable. But as Julie made the point a little while ago, it is important to consider that we are still navigating the waters of the new media and we have not yet necessarily found the perfect solution with regard to incorporating the Internet in a presidential campaign. Perhaps there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Ultimately, though, this is yet to be known.

Ron Paul can fight on, although it is becoming increasingly difficult to claim that his cadre of impassioned online supporters will cause a noticeable difference in the amount of delegates he attains throughout the primary season.

For now, I have learned to not become overly consumed by a campaign that appears highly energized online but is lacking in traditional GOTV and mobilization strategies. In any case, Hunsucker’s panel (on which Lam is sitting) will examine why there is an apparent disconnect between the online community and offline results and what campaigns can do to manage this gap.

The hot topic of discussion today in IPDI labs was the use of viral online political video by each of the three remaining major campaigns. We began the discussion after poking fun at some newly emerging viral videos from Sen. Clinton supporters, most notably this music video that was drawing comparisons to the 1972 Nixon Now advertisement.

In light of the success of three Obama viral videos (Yes We Can, Obama Girl and Hillary 1984) that combined for 15 million views on YouTube, it has become a political reality that video not originating from the campaign can have incredible effects. That being said, more often than not, political videos go nowhere (other providing fodder for Wonkette) and this Hillary video is exhibit A. A lighthearted piece that was clearly trying to take a piece of the “cool” pie away from Obama and cash in on other musical videos about the candidates, fell flat on its face for obvious reasons. The videos that have worked best for each candidates are ones that were rooted in the overarching theme of the campaign.

For the Obama camp, viral videos are easier to create because his campaign values of hope, inspiration and change are ones that resonate with the youngest cohort of voters, which are the same people who have grown up on the Internet. The Hillary 1984 ad works well for them because it is based on the idea of a radical change from the mundane, based on an old technology commercial. The Obama Girl video uses some popular culture overtones, sexual appeal and a catchy tune. The Yes We Can video is the penultimate example of a video capturing the campaigns themes, as it is the Obama campaign in lyrical form (whether or not its good for democracy is another question for another post).

All of Obama’s video play on the same messages and themes that created his movement and have propelled him into the race that he and Clinton are currently engaged in. While completely different from Obama’s theme, McCain has similarly used his campaign messages to craft the video that his campaign is putting forward. One of the better examples is an online only advertisement produced by the campaign called Courageous Service (truth in advertising: this was created by the husband of IPDI’s Director). This video is much longer than the three Obama examples, but it capitalizes on some of McCain’s key campaign themes and speaks to the online audience that supports McCain. McCain followers, like Hillary followers, aren’t going to respond as well to a scantily clad woman dancing around or a bunch of young music and Hollywood stars singing as the Obama crowd does. Rather, campaigns like McCain’s and Clinton’s that are succeeding on the basis of policy discussions should have video that reflects that, just as the video succeeding for the Obama campaign are well-rooted in the concept of hope that is driving the campaign.

Hillary started off her video strategy on the right foot with her online announcement of her intention to run for President and the online conversations that followed. The problem is that she has since strayed from that with the Hillary 4 U & Me video and prior to that this Behind the Music parody that was about 6-years too late to be funny. Clinton needs to focus on her experience and her policy prowess in her online video whether its created by the campaign or not. Otherwise, her videos will end up on Wonkette much more often than they receive the quantity of free media that Obama has.

IPDI’s very own financial director, Chris Brooks, who moonlights on campus as the chairman for the George Washington University College Republicans, made CNN last week. In a short three-minute video you can see here, Chris and a few other GW students managed to get their two cents in about college-age voters’ use of the Internet.

Chris, like most of us here at IPDI, is a compulsive Web surfer and admits as much in the video. While this expression of love for 24/7 access to the candidates might scare off a few Luddites (mostly because that’s all that is really left of that movement…just a few), Chris is a good example of how plugged-in young voters can enjoy greater breadth of knowledge about the candidates than our parents’ generation could through newspapers and once a night newscasts just by heading over to the dot-coms for the news networks or junkie sites like RealClearPolitics.

And I am not just saying this because Chris is the guy who fills out my paycheck…although a small blogging bonus could never hurt!

There is a piece up on the New York Times Bits blog interviewing the founder of Slashdot. He questions the wisdom of crowds and points to Digg as evidence of its problems. He specifically cites the fact that “Ron Paul may be a valid candidate. But what that is really demonstrating is that you are seeing 1 or 2 percent of a community shaping where the whole community is going. A small dedicated group of people can manipulate these sites very easily.”

And he is correct. We all know Ron Paul has used the Internet rather effectively, especially for raising money. But before he was known for the “money bombs”, he was getting tons of articles submitted to Digg and other community news sites. These articles would make their way to the front page because the Ron Paul Internet herd would consistently vote them up.

This is different than the Slashdot method where a team of editors chooses what makes the front page and what doesn’t. Personally, I enjoy the Slashdot method even though its less democratic. It prevents a site from being overrun by a small band of dedicated supporters.

I’m Greece-blogging for this one, so it will be brief. I just wanted to follow up and note that the Slashdot interview of Garrett Graff I mentioned a few days ago has now been completed. Garrett’s answers are up here. I do like the 10 questions that won out, and his answers are pretty good as well. Check it out.

Back to the streets of Athens.