Partido de la Red, Argentina's Internet Party 3 Favorite 

The following is Alex King's description of the founding of the Partido de la Red in Buenos Aires, Argentina:

... "a giant Trojan horse trundled through the streets of Buenos Aires...this was how the newly formed Partido de la Red, or Internet Party, announced its candidacy for the city’s elections. The horse was the perfect symbol for their desire to break down the walls of the political system from the inside and invite everyone to join in."

"To bring people into the political conversation, the Internet Party uses a tool called Democracy OS, an online open-source platform that allows members of the public to debate policies and decide how they want their representatives to vote. Pia Mancini, a young Argentine sociologist and co-founder of the Internet Party, believes they’ve hit upon a more radical democracy. 'We said we’re going to take every decision in parliament together with citizens,' she says. 'All hell broke loose after that, because it was absolutely disruptive and very radical.' She argued eloquently that the wave of popular frustration sweeping around the world resulted from governments’ inability to communicate with people in the age of online conversations."

"But, far from encouraging people to turn away from mainstream politics, she wants to use the internet as a tool to catalyse that anger and bring people into the system to improve it from the inside."

"Democracy OS was developed to create a meaningful conversation between politicians and citizens throughout the political cycle. Rather than excluding people who can’t attend meetings or rallies, the online platform allows them to discuss every policy in a way that fits in with their lives."

"In their first election, the Partido de la Red didn’t win a seat but the value of Democracy OS has been recognised around the world and adopted by Mexico, used in the process of writing the new Tunisian constitution, and projects are in development in both Chile and Costa Rica."

"Despite their commitment to harnessing the power of the internet, Partido de la Red are firmly rooted in the real world. They meet every week at their headquarters in San Telmo. Wheeling out a Trojan horse and distributing stickers are just some of the ways they spread their message offline."

(King, December 10, 2014, Huck Magazine: http://www.huckmagazine.com/perspectives/activism-2/argentinas-internet-...)