Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University Invites you to a Special Seminar by Daniel Drache Associate Director, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and Professor of Political Science, York University on "Obama's Stunning Victory - Winning and Loosing in an Internet Age" Thursday February 19th 2009 4.00 PM Conference Room, CSLG, JNU, New Delhi Abstract This talk will focus on the importance of Web 2.0 and Facebook to Obama's electoral success. I will examine the growth of managerialism in political elections in which increasingly there is no clear winner in a conventional sense. The Obama victory is exceptional on many levels as I will explain and represents a break with machine style politics. People across the world are fascinated by his leadership. He was the first modern leader to exploit new infomation technologies that uses discussion groups, chat rooms and virtual organizations on Facebook to create a political movement to mobilize his mass base. I will explain in some detail how Obama's campaign allowed people to get involved actively and how they became the generators of ideas and suggestions. These virtual modes of communicating with the public, helped create a clear choice for the Americans. In particular, technology helped Obama reach the critical voters below the age of 30, and to win their hearts. This process was coordinated by paid staff across about 780 regional offices in the US. The campaign also included texting through cell phone networks and e-mails as an important promotional component. We need to establish the lessons from Obama's electoral success and I will draw upon both Habermas' idea of the sphere of interactive communication and Hannah Arendt's idea of the right to have rights as pivotal notions in new citizenship practice and the emergence of defiant global publics. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Anup Kumar Das New Delhi, India http://anupkumardas.blogspot.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Connect with friends all over the world. Get Yahoo! India Messenger at http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/?wm=n/ -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.