Mali Election Project – Jeff Kessler, Emma Hersh, and Julia Boyer

This semester in Globalization, the class was divided into groups, each of which was given a country. Jeff, Emma, and Julia selected Mali in the Saharan region of Africa. The goal was to assemble a collection of student recorded election interviews documenting Mali’s election process. To achieve this goal, each member of the group selected a role that would make him/her responsible for a specific form of contact to Mali. Jeff was responsible for utilizing his abundance of followers on twitter. Julia used her charm via email to reach schools in Mali. Emma used her connections with the BuildOn global community service organization to network with a school in Mali.

While the election was going to take place in late April, an unexpected obstacle interfered. A military coup seized power and the election was thwarted! The school that Julia was in contact with disassembled but no one was in danger. The country is still uncommunicative with the global community and assumably still under militant control.

Broadcasted Communication Documentation:

• Email 1
• Email 2
• Email 3
• Tweet 1
• Tweet 2