5 Great Online Election Trackers for the U.S. Midterms

by suniyee on October 30, 2014April 18, 2015

With the 2014 U.S. midterm elections just days away, attention is on voter habits and concerns, as well as how political campaigners are leveraging different methods to target their voter base. The Pew Research Center’s recent report on how liberals and conservatives inhabit different media worlds underscores the influence media has on voter awareness. Reports have also shown howsavvy campaigners have become — employing smartphone apps and data-driven research alongside old-school canvassing to appeal to a voter’s sensibilities — and how online video has become a force for marketing and name-shaming.

But, voters now also have more tools than ever to help them sort through all the information, spin or otherwise. This election cycle has grown a slew of online tools to track different issues, compare candidates and experiment with data to gain perspective against the onslaught of information. They follow in the footsteps of apps like PolitiFact’s “Settle It!” and Talking Points Memo’s “PollTracker,” both of which came out during the 2012 elections and have been updated with information for this year’s midterm elections. PBS MediaShift assembled a few of these online initiatives that level the playing field for voter awareness.

STORYFUL

Ahead of voting day, journalists at the social media news agency have been publishing aninteractive video map twice a week showing where news has been trending. The point, according to Storyful’s blog, is “to help newsrooms find the signal amid the noise.” Users can zoom in to the different videos on the map to view them, or navigate through the campaign trail from the beginning on the video embed below the map.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times’ policy and politics venture Upshot, launched this past spring, has an election forecasting model called Leo that relies on data from different polls, fundraisers and other variables to predict outcomes. Now the Upshot has adjusted Leo’s settings so that users can see the effects of the different variables themselves and create their own election forecasts. It’s an interactive game of sorts, and the person who submits the best election forecast has a chance at winning what the Times calls “the coveted Upshot Cup for Excellence in Election Forecasting.”

NATIONAL JOURNAL

National Journal has brought its “Hotline Race Tracker” — previously available only to members — in front of the pay wall these past couple of weeks before the elections. Audiences can look at different aspects of campaigns state-by-state and race-to-race, and the Race Tracker will show everything from campaign finance and issue rankings to candidates’ election histories and social media presence. According to the Journal, the Race Tracker uses “more data points than any other similar tool” to give the most comprehensive look at the elections for anyone who wishes to follow it closely.

BING

Similar to the National Journal’s Race Tracker, Bing has also released a comprehensive guide to the elections at bing.com/elections, where users can search through different maps, up-to-date predictions and personalized “Voter Guides.” “Politics aside, our goal with Bing Elections and the personalized Voter Guide is to arm voters so they can make decisions based on the most comprehensive and best information available,” Bing wrote on its blog.

GREENHOUSE

This free browser plug-in developed by 16-year-old Nick Rubin follows the premise, “Some are red. Some are blue. All are green,” to draw attention to the role of money in the elections. The plug-in highlights the names of different Congress members on any webpage, and when one hovers the mouse over the name, a box pops up showing the amount of funding the candidate has, and from which sources. The data is taken from OpenSecrets.org. Although Rubin is too young to vote, hetold the Washington Post that the scale of the problem made it necessary to have this information more publicly available and accessible. “Even kids my age are able to see this data and recognize it’s a problem; we’ll be growing up in this political system,” he told the Post.

Sonia Paul is a freelance journalist based in India, and is interim editorial assistant at PBS MediaShift. She is on Twitter @sonipaul.

This piece was originally published on October 30, 2014, on PBS MediaShift.

What Can Instagram Tell Us About Social Upheaval in Ukraine?

by suniyee on October 29, 2014November 22, 2014

Twitter and Facebook have become default resources for journalists, newsrooms and ordinary citizens during news events, but where does Instagram fit into that picture? That was the question a team of researchers at CUNY’s Graduate Center asked while watching the protests in Ukraine unfold this past February. After months of analyzing more than 13,000 Instagram photos shared by around 6,000 people in the central square of Ukraine — known as the Maidan — the team has recently released the study “The Exceptional & the Everyday: 144 Hours in Ukraine.” It’s the first project to analyze the use of Instagram during a social upheaval.

Instagram is known as the visual social network, but according to Lev Manovich, a computer scientist and the lead researcher for the project, it’s much more of a “communication medium.” Whereas newsrooms might scour Instagram for photos to showcase breaking news, the study found that ordinary Instagram users detail how they’re relating to news as well — which may be just as important.

Pew: Women Suffering Online Harassment Worse Than Men

by suniyee on October 22, 2014December 20, 2014

Harassment has become intrinsic to life online for the 89 percent of American adults who are Internet users. Nearly three-quarters of adult Internet users have witnessed some form of online harassment and 40 percent have personally experienced it, according to a new Pew Research survey on the topic that’s the first of its kind.

Young women in particular reported hostile experiences online, according to Maeve Duggan, a research analyst at Pew and the main author of the report. Continue reading…

Narendra Modi’s US visit elicits mixed reactions from Indian-Americans

by suniyee on September 25, 2014November 22, 2014

The new Indian leader is as controversial as he is popular, and many still remember his inaction during 2002 riots.

Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, Sept. 18, 2014. His upcoming visit to New York has exposed a political divide in the Indian-American community. (Harish Tyagi / EPA)

If Indians living in the United States had been allowed to vote in this year’s Indian elections, says Bharat Barai, “Narendra Modi probably would’ve gotten an 85-to-90-percent vote — far better than he got in India.”

Barai is the chief organizer of a reception for the new prime minister, to be held at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sept. 28; the free tickets were snapped up in a matter of weeks. This will be Modi’s first visit to the United States since the U.S. Congress denied him a visa in 2005 for failing to protect religious freedom during riots in 2002 in the western Indian state of Gujarat, during which more than 1,000 Muslims were killed. The visa decision was reversed earlier this year after Modi’s political party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, swept the Indian elections in May.

Now Modi’s upcoming visit is exposing a political divide in the Indian-American community. While the Indian American Community Foundation, the organizer of the Madison Square Garden reception, is pulling out all the stops for the event — which will have upward of 20,000 attendees and live telecasts in Times Square and online — a coalition of progressive South Asian and civil-rights groups is planning a protest outside the venue. For most Indians in the United States, Modi’s ascent signifies a more powerful role for India on the world stage, especially economically. But a determined minority is keeping the memory of the riots alive and raising questions about what a divisive government means for India’s secular identity.

India’s new leader favors the Hindi language, which is a problem for the country’s 50 million Urdu speakers

by suniyee on August 1, 2014November 22, 2014

I spent several months in Lucknow, India, studying Urdu.

I knew that it would be a daunting task. But I had a leg up — it wasn’t going to be completely new. Several years ago, I’d studied Hindi, which the native tongue of about 25 percent of Indians. The country’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, appears to favor Hindi, which has alarmed speakers of India’s many other languages.

To the untrained ear, Hindi and Urdu sound similar. They share a lot of the same vocabulary. But they use different scripts. And they have different connotations.

Is it time for India to look inward or outward?

by suniyee on June 30, 2014November 22, 2014

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) is greeted by his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif after Modi took the oath of office at the presidential palace in New Delhi May 26, 2014. Reuters/Adnan Abidi

As freshly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet make their first visits abroad, many analysts argue India’s new government seems intent to “go regional” in order to boost India’s international profile. Modi’s swearing-in ceremony included invitations to every single SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Corporation) nation, including an historic first-time visit from Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. His first visit abroad was to Bhutan (where he had an “oops moment” and accidentally referred to the country as “Nepal” while addressing the Bhutan Parliament). Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj recently returned from visiting Bangladesh, a visit that’s also been touted as an “effective model of development” for strengthening ties throughout India’s South Asian neighborhood.

But as Indian columnist Nilanjana S. Roy writes, Modi’s inclination to reach out to regional neighbors isn’t just a sign of India looking outward — it’s also reflective of India’s search for a stronger Indian identity, and an inherent suspicion of the West:

Remembering India’s Emergency (and the vital importance of punctuality)

by suniyee on June 29, 2014November 22, 2014

This week, India celebrated the 39th anniversary of the declaration of the Emergency, the 21-month long period under which then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi virtually made India a police state in order to seize all control in the country and rule by decree. “All the fundamental rights were suspended, politicians were arrested and a heavy censorship was imposed on the media,” Mahak Raigarhia writes in DNA India.

Language politics in the new India

by suniyee on June 24, 2014November 22, 2014

When Narendra Modi of the right-of-center Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was sworn in as India’s newest prime minister on May 26, political observers — and language enthusiasts — started speculating whether his rule would lead to a renewed interest in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India’s Brahmin scholars. At least two dozen newly elected members of Parliament took their oaths in Sanskrit, Hari Kumar of the New York Times reported. The language is widely backed by the Hindu right wing, which helped Modi come to power (the BJP is a spawn of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a volunteer Hindu nationalist group).

Hindu nationalists “see the language as a link to a civilization uncorrupted by Persian-speaking Muslim emperors and English-speaking British viceroys,” the New York Times’ Ellen Barry wrote in a letter to readers. “Early independence leaders had hoped to phase out English as an official language, but that provoked widespread protests in the country’s south, where Hindi is not widely spoken.” Hindi and English are both considered official languages in India.

Now, just less than a month since the new government came to power, the focus has shifted away from Sanskrit and onto one of its language descendants: Hindi.

Hindu Nationalism in the Age of Modi

by suniyee on June 8, 2014November 22, 2014

RSS volunteers at their morning shakha. (Sonia Paul) — RSS volunteers in Lucknow at their morning shakha. (Sonia Paul)

It was barely 6 AM, but the vast park in the center of Lucknow, the capital of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, was already bustling with people taking advantage of the early morning cool before the stifling May heat set in.

Children were playing on the trim grass, swings, and miniature rock walls. Adults dressed in tracksuits and salwar kameezes were walking briskly on the cement path.

And secluded in a corner of the morning hustle, in plain sight to anyone who cared to cast a glance, a group of five men were performing their morning drills. They began with simple stretches.

Twitter diplomacy: A taste of foreign policy under Modi

by suniyee on May 24, 2014November 22, 2014

In the wake of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory over the incumbent National Congress Party, a host of in-depth commentaries and analyses (as well as jokes and Internet memes) have come out discussing the outcome of the Indian elections and its coverage.

The bulk of these pieces focus on how startling Narendra Modi’s defeat over Rahul Gandhi was, and the root causes behind it. As Modi gets ready to become inaugurated this coming Monday, however, the topic has moved quickly from domestic concerns to international ones — just what might India’s foreign policy look like under Modi?