Chilean Bloggers: What happened with our Politics Blogging?

Roberto Arancibia, a well known blogger in Chile, posts that we are only ten days away from the presidential and parliamentary elections and that political Blogs should be burning hot, but….why aren't they?

Most of the comments agree that blogs are not mainstream or still too “elite”. Maria Elena said that “young people are not interested in politics,” while Christian thinks the candidates don’t really have arguments to debate, so they don’t need to use blogs.

“Politicians use their blogs to post speeches and press releases”, comments Angela. And Pato M said that it “is because it's the end of the year”.

Carlos Valencia thinks that it is common for politicians to react late to small revolutions. He and Nadia comment that no candidate offers true participative democracy, while another Carlos also emphasizes that we have to “democratize democracy”.

The majority of political speech is about participative democracy, but why they don’t use blogs as a platform of participatory politics?

11 comments

  • Most of politicians shows a short term vision, perhaps by ignorance.
    I think they feel fear of direct comments in their blogs.

    Blogs are just starting in Chile, that’s the reason.

  • Fear and ignorance. Both are crossed in the relation that the politicians have had with blogs during the last campaign. Nevertheless, pushed by its voters, this situation would have to change in the future medium. And there a question arises. Because those messages that came from above (politicians) downwards (citizen), of suddenly are transformed into equivalent messages. We will see what happens.

  • I’m still think that the chilean election this year had a boring electoral campaign, mainly because all the candidates, specially Bachelet and Lavin at the beginning only want to use marketing as the main way to attract votes. So, in this scenario blogs were not effective because they would have needed to expose more ideas. This election is the “not debating election”.

  • What surprised me wasn’t so much a lack of disagreement or vision amongst the candidates as much as a severe lack of actual participation between the candidates and the few registered users that left comments. It seems to me that Pais Digital should implement a rule which says that each candidate must respond at least once to the comments following their posts.

    It’s too bad that Chile won’t have any representatives at the upcoming International Workshop of Political Campaigns in Washington D.C. I think that Chile is advanced in the use of blogs as campaign tools and that you guys could offer worthy advice of what works and what needs improvement.

    Lo que me sorprendió no era una falta de discusión ni visión entre los candidatos tanto como una falta de participación entre los candidatos y los pocos usuarios que dejaron comentarios. Me parece que País Digital debería poner una regla que dice que cada candidato necesita responder, a lo menos, una vez a los comentarios que siguen lo que escribieron.

    Es una lastima que no habrá ningún representante de Chile en el Seminario Internacional de Comunicación Política Electoral porque se me hace que Chile está muy avanzado en el uso de los blogs como herramienta electoral y que ustedes nos pueden dar consejo de que sirve bien y de que necesitamos mejorar.

  • I think fanatic economic goals are surpassing political, civic ones in our society and politicians are playing the game too. Thus young people are each time less interested in them and politics, so they feel some kind of apathy about publicly communicate their ideas.

  • WoW¡¡ Roberto por estos lados¡¡

  • Chilean politics SUCKS! that’s the reason. Their only preoccupation is to be TV stars and smash opponents. With luck they know how to power on the computer (that’s not a joke). We need a revolution here. A revolution of ideas. A change in the mind of our people. Our current politics shame on us. And they think we are stupids. That’s their main error.

    We don’t the key, we’ll break it!

  • First Educational Podcast from Chile is in San Fernando – Sexta Región

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  • First Educational Podcast from Chile is in San Fernando – Sexta Región

    Dear friends:

    As and old time dxer or short wave listener, that I have changed the SWL hobby Of International Radios on Short wave, (Dxing) by the Internet, I have the pleasure to let you know that as May 17, 2005, International Day of Communication, you can download and listen the First Podcasting produced and poscasted from San Fernando Chile, to all Internet surfers of the world.

    If you have time and are interested in listening these programs from San Fernando, you can visit my website, where you can download the MP3 file for a later listening on your PC or MP3 player.

    This is my site: http://www.chilepodcast.cl
    This is my blog: http://chilepodcast.blogspot.com

    I remain for your questions, comments and suggestions about these programs.

    At the same time, I’ll be very thankful if you could send this mail to your Contacts, and distribute this news on your web site, in order to promote this new technology of communication.

    Also I would like to receive some mp3 files with your greetings so that I could publish it on my podcast.

    If you want to know more about me, search on http://www.google.com for:

    Carlos Toledo Verdugo or chilepodcast

    Program contents:

    Both my wife and I are Christian Teachers and we would like to podcast poetry, Chilean music, the history of Dxing in Chile, Bible reading and greetings from listener.

    My podcast are in Special Spanish because I want reach all the people on the internet that are interested in learning my mother tongue Spanish.

    Also we would like to be in touch through this technology with fellow Spanish Teachers as a Second Language and their students of Spanish language.

    Sincerely, and God Bless you all.

    chilepodcast@gmail.com

    Carlos Toledo Verdugo
    Primary School Teacher
    Profesor de Educación General Básica
    San Fernando – Sexta Región Chile

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