Politics in Second Life

In 2007 Estonia held the first online voting for the national parliamentary election. It was a big turning point for Politics in second life. Alec Charles, principal lecturer in Media at the University of Bedfordshire wrote an article about Estonia: The Electronic State: Estonia`s New Media Revolution. Charles state that “technology becomes a tool for the reinforcement of existing power structure” because using e-voting system is seen as an advantage of the educational and capable groups. Charles also talks about when the official government stopped printing its publication and made it exist in an almost exclusive electronic form which a third of the population cnat access and how that increases the existing power structure! Link.

So, it appears like a flawless great idea since it`s making the voting process easier and the government services more practical, but not everybody can access the internet and even among the people who can access the internet many of them are not good in it.

Barak Obama used Second Life heavily to win the 2008 election. And since entering the white house his administrating used social networking and Internet tools, such as facebook , YouTube and twitter to interact with the public. Link. In the same campaign Obama announced his Vice president by sending a text message to his supporters.

The current events in Egypt also reflected in Second life not only with social network like facebook and twitter but also in 3D virtual community websites like Secondlife.com when Anti-Mubarak speeches were banned from Second Life Egypt by the owner of its sim whose clearly a Mubarak supporter. Link. In real life, the people in Egypt were banned from sharing national decisions for almost 30 years under Mubarak`s brutal regime,  and now it can happen in Second Life too! So, is second life really different after all? Or is it simply “he who owns the gold, makes the rules”.