{"id":32407,"date":"2018-01-12T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T19:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=32407"},"modified":"2018-01-12T14:26:10","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T19:26:10","slug":"how-technology-is-changing-the-face-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=32407","title":{"rendered":"How Technology Is Changing The Face of Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>&#8211; Contributed content &#8211;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>12 January 2018. Technology has always had much more potential than most people realize. While many think of it as a source of entertainment or at best a tool that improves our productivity, the truth is that technology is transforming many aspects of life &#8211; and in significant ways, too. Take <a href=\"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=30242\">Bitcoin<\/a>. While there\u2019s a lot of negative press surrounding the cryptocurrency, if it takes off then it could bring the big bank to its knees &#8211; and who can think of a bigger revolution than that? Then there\u2019s the matter of politics. It\u2019s easy to forget just how much of an impact politics has been affected by tech; below, we take a look at five ways it has.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_32408\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32408\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/bag-electronics-girl-hands-359757\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32408\" src=\"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/WomanPursePhone_TofrosCom_Pexels.jpg\" alt=\"Woman with purse and phone\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/WomanPursePhone_TofrosCom_Pexels.jpg 500w, https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/WomanPursePhone_TofrosCom_Pexels-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/WomanPursePhone_TofrosCom_Pexels-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/WomanPursePhone_TofrosCom_Pexels-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-32408\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Tofros.com, Pexels)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><b>Greater information<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The press used to hold all the cards. If it wasn\u2019t reported in the media, and you hadn\u2019t seen it first hand, then, chances are, you would never have heard about it. That\u2019s not the case anymore. Within minutes of an event that could affect politics, you can read about it on social media; in some cases, you can even live stream the event. If a political upstart isn\u2019t getting enough attention from the mainstream media, then no worries, simply head to Periscope and see what they\u2019re saying first hand.<\/p>\n<p><b>Political participation<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, it\u2019s not politics that is the problem; it\u2019s that the general population isn\u2019t engaged enough. Of course, this isn\u2019t necessarily anyone\u2019s fault. People lead busy lives, and can\u2019t be expected to jump through hoops just to cast a vote. However, this may soon be a problem of the past. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2017\/04\/26\/selfie-voting-could-make-elections-safer.html\">Smartmatic<\/a>, an election technology firm, has developed an app that allows people to vote via their mobile phone. All they need to do is to verify their identity with a selfie and then vote. With queuing up at the polling stations a thing of the past, voter apathy will decline.<\/p>\n<p><b>Raising funds<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s take a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/commentisfree\/2016\/feb\/16\/thomas-piketty-bernie-sanders-us-election-2016\">rise of Bernie Sanders<\/a>. The self-proclaimed socialist should have had no chance of becoming President, yet he wasn\u2019t all that far away. So how did he do it? By leveraging the power of the internet, specifically crowdfunding. He was never going to receive backing from the billionaires with deep pockets; but with the power of the web, he was able to raise money from ordinary citizens who believed in what he was trying to achieve.<\/p>\n<p><b>Uncovering improper behavior<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Take a look at history, and you\u2019ll soon uncover plenty of shady details that were kept quiet at the time. Today, it\u2019s much harder for politicians to keep things private &#8211; and that\u2019s only a good thing for democracy. It was easy to control a newspaper, but you won\u2019t get far if you try to control the internet.<\/p>\n<p><b>Final thoughts<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Of course, not every impact technology has had on politics has been positive, as <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2017\/11\/the-russian-hacking-scandal-is-way-bigger-than-donald-trump.html\">the Russian hacking scandal<\/a> shows. However, that we even know about that shows that overall, technology is helping to improve the face of politics. What will the future hold? We\u2019ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>t\u2019s easy to forget just how much of an impact politics has been affected by tech; we take a look at five ways it has.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[132,78],"class_list":["post-32407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-contributed","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32409,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32407\/revisions\/32409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}