Netroots
The term overlaps with the related concepts of e- democracy, participatory democracy and open source governance, but they are more specific, better defined and more accepted. Netroots Outreach is a campaign - oriented activity that uses the network for the complement to traditional activities, collected, for example, working with the grassroots movement in which voices and organized efforts at local and regional levels by binding together. These efforts include Meetup and the netroots - grassroots organization that supported the election of Howard Dean for DNC Chairman in January 2005.
Every now and then, the term is used synonymously with the term blogosphere; However, the blogosphere is considered as a subset of Netroots, because it only describes the online community of blogs, where Netroots plus includes several liberal outpost online, as MoveOn and Think Progress.
Advocates believe that the main characteristics of Netroots his Dezentralisiertheit and connectivity in the network are that it forms communication points, whose goal is to influence traditional media, but which are not directly addressed abroad. The Netroots shows up as non-hierarchical and decentralized through events like blog warm.
American Origin of the term
The first known use of the term in its modern definitions is Netroots for Howard Dean by Jerome Armstrong in December 2002 on MyDD. Howard Dean was one of the first to discover the potential of blogs and websites, and dropped his campaign " the foundation for Obama's subsequent election victory." The democratic political consultant Joe Trippi writes the short-lived success of his clients damaligem Howard Dean to the listening and the leadership of the Netroots activity.
The Netroots also played a decisive role in the election of Wesley Clark in the presidential campaign in 2004. The rising power of the Netroots can also be observed during the 2006 midterm elections. In one example, a volunteer filmed for the Senate campaign of Democrat James Webb of Virginia, the comments by former Senator George Allen. The related notes, where George Allen from the volunteers as " Macaca " said ( the volunteers came from South Asia ), were considered by many as racist. The video was posted on YouTube. The resulting Netroots - attention to the video triggered a series of events that ended with the defeat of the senator. Jamed Webb had indeed been successfully selected and subsequently entered the Senate election for Virginia. Netroots activities supported Ned Lamont in his victory over Joe Lieberman in 2006.
Blog writers have contributed to several controversies. Below are the comments by the then Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, at a birthday party by then- Senator Strom Thurmond, the Dubai Ports World controversy, and the U.S. Attorney controversy.
Other similar activities
Netrootsaktivitäten are also taking place in Iran, which has a disproportionate number of bloggers and the United Kingdom, where it is to find strong support for e- democracy in the form of local forums were added to an approved form of feedback for the government's performance. Netroots UK was launched in 2011 as a project in partnership with the organizers of Netroots Nation U.S. to strengthen the Netroots in the UK with training and networking. In Australia, the Netroots 'progressive' lobby group GetUp has more members than all Australian political parties together.
Netroots activities have also begun to emerge in student politics, where social networks like Facebook are used in student elections.
In Sweden
The Social-Democratic Labour Party of Sweden has a network open to all "progressive" blogger in Sweden. The network meets regularly and holds an annual meeting, Nätrot ( Netroots in Swedish). The first Nätrot - meeting was held in the Swedish Parliament in 2006 with Joe Trippi as a guest speaker. The second, in 2008, also in the Swedish Parliament, and the third, Nätrot '09 was in Visby, Almedalen with John Aravosis of America Blog and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.
In 2010 the book " Netroots - A progressive blog movement that determined the agenda " ( Netroots - En progressive bloggrörelse som Sätter agendan ) in Sweden published (Author Johan Ulvenlöv ).
2012 was the largest gathering of progressive bloggers in Scandinavia held in Stockholm.