New Media Awards 2008 - Councillor Jonathan Bishop

Councillor Jonathan Bishop

http://www.jonathanbishop.org.uk/

Nominated in Democracy in action category.

Jonathan Bishop has a passionate interest in multimedia business and e-commerce, and a passionate commitment to social justice. He has a BSc in Multimedia Studies, an MSc in E-Learning and a Law Masters (LLM) in European Union Law. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration at Kingston University.

Having overcome serious medical problems Jonathan is determined that every voice should be heard and that society’s resources should be available to everybody. To this end he has set up www.jonathanbishop.org.uk. He has recently been elected as a local councillor.

1 nomination from readers

Jonathan works in the local area, and is a director of an e-learning business. In addition to this he maintains the nominated website, which forms the basis of Jonathan’s vision of interactive democracy. Via the site constituents can communicate with Jonathan, and see directly how he is working for the community. His vision is to be as open about his constituency work as possible.

There seems to be at present a cynical view of politicians and the whole political process, and this website hopes to be able to go some way towards refuting this. The site has been used to:

Enable community petitions to be delivered.
Provide evidence on-record to the local MP.
Provide an online forum for local people, which is read by Jonathan, and enables him to act upon local concerns.
Display pictures of environmental events and concerns taken by the public.

This website deserves the award because it is an attempt to start up a genuine local interactive way for the electorate to communicate with elected officials, and to feel that their voice is heard.

Nominated by John Morton, 31 May 2008

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