Romanian Political Leaders Invited to Second Life
On May 19, Romania will hold a referendum on whether to impeach its suspended president, Traian Basescu, who has been charged with violating the country’s constitution. Before that time, members of the Romanian community in the virtual world of Second Life would like to hear from him and other Romanian political leaders in a virtual venue that’s been built out for the purpose. The two-minute video above provides a tour of a nice build that’s apparently designed to host a debate between real Romanian political leaders, should they care to put in an appearance. The »debate hall« looks fairly accomodating, and comes complete with voting mechanisms and a press room that’s apparently wired to provide television feeds. The video cites 20,000 Romanian Second Life users, and says around 800 a day are visiting the in-world location. Of those polled, 95 percent say they’d like to participate in an electoral meeting in SL.
According to an email from SL resident Clement Rosher, who’s responsible for the build, “The staff is currently working hard for their two main goals: to bring the Romanian President to a meeting in Second Life and to support a live broadcast to a Romanian news TV station in real life.” The video addresses itself to Romanian political leaders, telling them, “The Romanians are looking forward to see if you know how to use the new communications channels and they are inviting you to speak in Second Life.”
I have no idea how effective that invitation will be, but I love that it’s being made. I also think it’s perfect that this kind of thing take hold in eastern Europe, where grassroots political activism has long been a much more significant part of the culture than it is in the U.S. That’s out of unfortunate political necessity, of course, but it will be interesting to see how effective a tool Second Life can be in the process. 3pointD welcomes Romania to the growing list of countries whose citizens are becoming politically active in the virtual world.
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This is very interesting news. I know Romanian BusinessWeek and a few other publications have run Second Life stories a while ago, so this project is a good follow-up.
However, only about 1.8 million people out of a total population of 22 million in Romania are listed to have broadband (and thus the infrastructure to run SL). It seems like this effort is mostly geared at the top percentage of Romanian population and Romanians overseas.
Congrats to Clement for taking the initiative and I’m looking forward to seeing its development :)
Very interesting times we are living in. Second Life is the perfect setup for a parallel (virtual) United Nations-like assembly, I think, where, hopefully, parties can work out their differences without the emotions and grandstanding that takes place in real life.
Well! That made the hair stand up on the back of my neck… The new continental congress will form before long I’m sure. http://www.in8years.com/in_8_years/2007/05/digital_tea_in_.html
[…] Referendum in Second Life “Am avut o scurta discutie cu Clement Rosher despre referendumul virtual organizat in SecondLife.Stirea despre invitatia catre politicienii romani de a participa la o discutie deschisa in Second Life a aparut si pe unul dintre cele mai vizitate bloguri despre Metaverse: 3pointD.com […]
Very pleasant to see the Romanian community growing and becoming more and more active in SecondLife. Lets only hope that SecondLife itself will grow enough to become the standard for 3D Internet.
Foarte placut sa observam cum comunitatea romaneasca din SecondLife creste continuu si devine din ce in ce mai activa. Sa speram ca SecondLife in sine va creste si va deveni standardul pentru Internetul tridimensional.
La mai mare.
Horia Negulesco
[…] The relatively tame Romanians hosted a day long referendum to debate the impeachment of their already suspended president. While there were no weapons in sight, there was a full day of live media coverage broadcast from Second Life to real life Romanian television networks. By all accounts the mainstream news reporters considered the idea of debating national political issues in a virtual world to be completely reasonable. […]