Part II: Interesting Blog-projects Presented in My Class "The Emergence and Rise of the American Politicosphere"

Now, when I am finally done with grading, I have a spare minute to blog about several blogs, which were successfully presented in my class last week. (Read Part I) Today, I want to present two outstanding group-projects. These two blogs are very different from each other. Yet they have several things in common: both blogs raise awareness about the role of social networks in contemporary politics, these blogs have clear structure, neat design, quality content (I cannot but mention the selection of links to awesome articles and videos) and bitter-sweet humour.

All about Wikileaks by Leaker123
No doubts, this blog turned out to be the best ever presented in my classes in terms of design. Of course, what really matters is the content of a blog; however, I cannot but admit that I am very impressed by the final results of Leakers123:

"We are three students of English who write on "All about WikiLeaks" about Wikileaks as a part of a university project. The goal of the blog is to gather information and opinions about WIkiLeaks and surrounding topics."

The blog is informative, it can be very easily navigated, the design is neat AND the blog-posts are very well-written. I think, the three student bloggers did an outstanding job. Many thanks for this effort!

Social Media Battle by Ger_watch and US_watch
This blog is a high-calorie political snack, which will complement your diet, one of the most engaging blogs produced in this class. The two bloggers decided to write "about politicians who explore the world of social media". They stage the battle, "Who will win? Americans or Germans? Let the battle begin." Intrigue! And the stage is ready for the social media battles between Obama and Merkel, and a number of prominent American and German politicians, dead and alive. What are the conclusions? Who are the winners?
US_watch wrote:

My personal résumé about how American politicians use the internet for their purpose is fairly positive. I found that most of them are doing a fine job. Especially president Obama seems to have a competent staff to keep his facebook profile up to date. Another finding was that the time of blogging politicians seems to come to an end. They tend to concentrate more on facebook or twitter as those aren’t as time-consuming. Though some politicians do better than others, there’s one thing that unites them all. It appears to me that they don’t grasp the spirit of web 2.0. To them the internet is a one-way street. A channel to call out to the world and their voters, but when it comes to virtually interact with them, most of them don’t seem to be that interested anymore.
That’s why I’d like to end my US-part of the blog with a plea to all politicians out there. Talk less, listen more and the explore the fine chances that you have not taken so far.

More here.
Ger_watch wrote:

The last post about German politicians, trying to use web 2.0. How can I summarize the last eleven entries? At first, I want to apologize if we have have affronted anybody, but actually we had no other choice. If you want to see boring politics, you can watch the German "Bundestag", but we wanted to entertain you.
Obviously, not everything's bad about German politicians on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Maybe, the German mentality does not even want blogging politicians and an enthusiasm towards politicians as it could be seen during Obama's election. But I personally think that it is important to improve the online performance as there are less and less young voters.

More here.
So, who is on the Wall of Fame and who is on the Wall of Shame according to Ger_&US_watch today?

In the bloggers' opinions, Dirk Niebel and his "Edelprofil" on MeinVZ, Ken Salazar on Facebook, those reponsible for most of the official German parties social network profiles and a couple of Republican leaders, etc. are obvious loosers in terms of effective social networking with the young voters.

As for the Wall of Fame, along with the obvious example of Barack Obama, thanks to the bloggers I got to know Kristina Schröder on Twitter, Hilda Solis on Twitter, to name a few.

I sincerely hope these blogs will not be abandoned. Overall, great job, WikiLeakers123 and Ger_&US_watch!

(to be continued)