LONDON, England – The call came at 10:30 p.m. Thankfully (for our editor), a bunch of us were chatting in a bar nearby work. We rushed back to the newsroom, the whispered rumour snapping at our heels as we raced through the backstreets of Soho. “Is it true? Is it true?”

Yep, it was true. We hit the news desk as Michael Jackson was confirmed dead.

The team got on the phones and the social networks for immediate reactions. Did they know at Glastonbury? Did they know on Twitter?

I headed out to the central London streets. At Oxford Circus underground station, the workmen were nonplussed. “Didn’t like his music.” “He was a pedophile,” they told me.

On London’s Regent Street, fans were kinder. While Samuel told me it was a stunt - “I heard he got bankrupt and all that so I thought he’d done a Tupac [Shakur].”  His girlfriend, Amber, said, “I was so upset it was unbelievable. I had tears in my eyes.”

Outside the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, the home of “Thriller Live,” Jackson fan Asmara told me the American singer’s music had meant a lot to her family. “Our parents listened to it, our parents’ parents and us, so it’s a tragedy,” she said.

Heading toward Leicester Square, London’s late-night hub, we met Jenny, a Jackson fan from Houston, Texas, and her friend, Julie, from Michigan. Jenny was keen to defend Jackson against the allegations that had slurred his career. “I think he had a horrible life and people wanted to twist it around. I think Michael Jackson’s innocent.”

Julie told me, “Michael Jackson was a great person … he was the ‘80s. It’s sad that he’s gone. He’ll be missed.”

Then my cameraman’s ears pricked up: Someone was playing “Billie Jean” nearby. We headed to Lisle Street, where Luis Carlos Ameida and friends were playing Jackson tunes from their car, in tribute to the fallen star. Luis had tickets to see Jackson at his sold-out run at the O2 stadium in London. Sending his condolences to Jackson’s family, he told us how much he’d been looking forward to seeing the pop superstar in the flesh.

“That would be the first time I ever met Michael Jackson, you know. I was going to scream,” he said. “But he will always be in our hearts. Every music he played. It will be remembered by us.”

From MyBarackObama's groundbreaking campaign mobilization to the Facebook groups that polled for and against potential VP candidates (bye bye Evan Bayh!), 2008 has been a fascinating ride, from a social media viewpoint as well as for all us political junkies. The lightspeed evolution of campaigning tactics has made this election more transparent, more trackable and arguably more democratic (strictly with a small "d") than ever before.

Now it's set to get nastier, too.

Back in August, we looked at the fears that some voting activists have about online dirty tricks raising their ugly heads during this election.

Experts like Lillie Coney, associate director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have told us of their concern that traditional dirty tricks – such as leaflets giving false information about polling times and who's eligible to vote – will multiply online this year. And sadly, it's easy to see why – it's cheaper, quicker and more efficient at reaching larger numbers of people, as any of our spam filters will tell us.

But voting rights advocates are fighting back, with the launch of a new wiki aimed at logging all attempts at voter suppression.

The proclaimed non-partisan Voter Suppression Wiki is run by blogger and Democrat supporter Baratunde, aka Jack Turner, reported ComputerWorld.com this week, with the aim "to provide a central location for reports on efforts to keep certain voters from the polls."

One week in, cases raised include: reports that the Veterans administration was blocking non-profit groups from registering vets at VA facilities, in violation of federal law; Alternet writer Sara Hebel's report that in Virginia, students were told they might lose their dependency status on their parents' tax returns if they registered to vote; in Michigan, the GOP has denied allegations that it was planning to use foreclosure lists to prevent people registered at those addresses from voting; while 31 polling locations have been changed at short notice in Indiana, where Democrats hope to turn the red state blue.

Yesterday, a post on the wiki by "BlackWomeninEurope" reported the receipt of a suspect overseas California ballot with an incorrect ballot number and spelling mistakes.

Advocates say that while individual cases may not contravene any laws, the snowball effect of dissuading a handful of voters here, a handful there, can be enough to alter the outcome of elections in closely fought states.

It'll be interesting to see what information is gathered through this site – not only from a party split perspective (at the time of writing, all allegations were blue-on-red), but in terms of the tactics used. We'll be watching ...