From Politics to E-Politics

Abstract

ICTs are slowly being acknowledged as effective tools for political mobilisation in the information age. Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and the Arab Spring are typical examples of how ICTs can foster political change in the face of challenges that were considered insurmountable before the information age. The secrets behind such success stories are not readily available to local change leaders at a time when authoritarian states are devising ways of entrenching the status quo in the information age. This emphasises the need to inform activists about the relevance of updating pre-information age models in order to address the challenges of politics in the information age. It also calls for more academic analysis on how to conceptualise the role of earlier political models in the information age. This chapter presents a systematic approach for renewing traditional political models to the e-world by proposing how to update Alinsky's (1971) community organising model used by Obama 2008 campaign. The relevance of this chapter to a book on politics in the information age is that it prepares strategists and scholars to update their tried and tested strategies to a new era as Obama did.