Will be blogging about the thought-provoking sessions at this week’s Politics Online Conference over the weekend, but wanted to whip up a quick post about a video that’s been circulating on political blogs.
Regardless of your views on the conflict in Israel, this YouTube video, featured on yesterday’s RealPolitix (highly recommended for non-partisan-tech-related-political news), called ‘Operation Cast Lead’ is a phenomenal example of the capabilities of online videos for awareness-raising, advocacy, lobbying and message-dissemination.
This simple, but extremely powerful 5 ½ minute clip uses simple narrative & archived news clips (old hat) – but in a first-person-shooter-video-game style to speak the language of a younger online audience & demonstrate the real effects of the conflict with a great deal of statistics and facts about the ongoing impact on civilians.
I encourage you to check it out either on YouTube, or on the RealPolitix site, where you can also read an accompanying positive pro-Israel write-up (best quote from the post “It is not an understatement to say that you can learn more from this video than you can from most of the media coverage.”):
No better time to be reminded of the power of gaming & visualization/advocacy/community than a couple days before pundit-izing on panels at the Canadian Gaming Summit. If any Torontoians are geeking out this weekend, @me on Twitter & maybe we can sync up a study date – I’d love a fresh set of eyes for some PPTz 
