Thought social media was just for fun and games? Well yes, but it's also for other things, such as talking to your favorite celebrities, finding your next job, and preventing corruption. Did that last one confuse you? Well I recently came across this really interesting article about how Zambians were using a monitoring campaign called "Bantu Watch" to report possible irregularities in the recent presidential election. Bantu Watch uses crowdsourcing to deliver reports from multiple users to monitor any problems and concerns regarding the poll.
I thought this was really cool because you can see social media being used for more than just talking to Ashton Kutcher. To us, we see social media as something to do while we're procrastinating or just bored. However, to Zambians, they see social media as a way to communicate with people throughout their country and ensure that their next leader is elected fairly. It's really eye-opening to see something like Twitter be put to such amazing use.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/us-zambia-election-internet-idUSTRE78J3TW20110920
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