Read our Research Paper:
A social networking application built around democracy, politics, and the public sector.
The e-lectorate project aims to see if people will interact with public institutions, constituencies, and vote on a social network that is dedicated to the topic of politics.
The idea behind e-lectorate project is that it fills a space in current social network market where existing social network brands and organisations are not currently focussed. Current social networking organisations are pitched as connecting people socially and professionally.
The e-lectorate project is pitched as a network that interacts with society and societal structures. Fundamentally the e-lectorate project is based on the same technology as modern social media companies.
However, the difference is in the focus of the platform. We recognise that political institutions are active on existing social media sites and can post content on these platforms for people to engage with them.
But these platforms are not set up in manner which organises the content by ward, constituency, region, or country - existing platforms are a global free-for-all whereby anyone can post any content. This is how these platforms are designed: maximum content, maximum users, any content goes.
Naturally there are controls in place to prevent users posting harmful content and some social network brands have a more dedicated focus on an element of society (e.g. professional social networks), but we do not believe that there is a dedicated social network for politics and democracy. This is what e-lectorate project is designed to be.
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The Origin Story
We began, like most things, with an idea that could solve a problem. We started to think about how society works, what makes up our values, and, how are we governed.
While we were pursuing this idea we started to come across some fundamental problems. We observed the private nature of how governments run countries. We noticed the minimal amount of involvement the electorate had in the governing of the society.
We operate a system of representative and indirect democracy. This means that we elect people to rule on our behalf. This makes sense because not everyone can or wants to be a politician. We also cannot spend all of our time going around and getting everyone's opinion and vote on every matter - it would take far too long and be overly bureaucratic we would never get anything done.
Getting everyone's thoughts and opinions before moving forward with public policy would have been a logistical impossibility... at the beginning of the century.
Now we live in an age of information sharing like never before. At the touch of a button we can get any information we desire. We can also express our thoughts and give our opinion to an entire population with ease. We can do basic indications of feelings and emotions on any given topic. Think about what you like and comment on.
We have all of this information sharing power, all of these methods of organising data, but we don't think we are harnessing its power to help society for public good.
Sure there is some good content but there, but look at where we are with connected social media. We post vain, self-congratulatory or confrontational content spouting insults disguised as opinion into the ether begging for likes and self-obsessive nonsense.
This is what we want to change.
We want to create a place where people can post intellectually stimulating content that actually matters.
Where we can get a true measure of what society thinks about how they are governed.
We want to do this on e-lectorate.uk
We want this to be the social network of democracy. A place where people can voice their opinion in a safe environment.
Safe from current social media companies who see their users as data points they can exploit and profit from.
We want our users to feel comfortable they can share their personal opinions and vote on serious topics that affect society.
This helps us move away from a system of indirect representative democracy and more to a system of direct democracy.
If e-lectorate reaches an optimal number of users, elected representatives can see how their constituents are feeling towards a specific topic and translate this into an action in Parliament.
This action could be bringing a debate, white paper or vote into Parliament.
This only serves to help our democratic society.