Rebelión and Democracy Now! journalists diverge over the potential of the new media.The spaniard Pascual Serrano, one of the creators of the website Rebelión, says that the movements based on online groups that took down dictators in Arab countries had little impact on the reality of these countries. Andrés Thomas Conteris, founder of the Democracy Now! spanish version of the website, defends the impact of movements such as Occupy Wall Street.
Marcel Gomes
Foz do Iguaçu – It is common to listen to analyses on the importance of the internet and social networks in the success of recent political events, e.g., the election of the first black president of the United States, Barak Obama, and on the revolts of the Arab Spring that took down the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt.
Even though he recognizes the role of the global internet in spreading democracy, the spanish journalist Pascual Serrano, one of the creators of the website Rebelión, contains his enthusiasm. “The social networks' revolutions have changed nothing in the United States and the Arab countries”, he said, with a pinch of irony, whilst taking part this Friday (28) in the 1st Bloggers World Meeting. “It is the same old story of changing little so as not to change anything at the end”, he criticized.
His argument is that the new media are not capable of dealing in depth with relevant issues without fragmenting them. That would be the case with twitter, with its telegraphic texts, and with youtube, whose videos have between three and four minutes, which dangerously cross the frontier between information and entertainment. “There is a basic character of politics in all of this”, he said.
The spanish journalist remembered that the social networks are under control of large companies, which are north-american in their majority, and can use their censuring powers – as they do – to remove polical content they judge to be inappropriate. “There is a very large possibility of intoxication and manipulation in the social networks”, pointed out Serrano, who, however, said that it is possible to change the path down which this is going.
For that to happen, he defended the adoption by the new media of “rigor and truth” as their value, that they denounce the global media's prevailing oligopoly model, and that they should invest in a new generation of journalists with humanistic values. “We need to take in some things even if we don't like them, because the new arenae of communication are not free from control”, he concluded.
A different opinion
The journalist Andrés Conteris, founder of the Democracy Now! spanish version of the website, makes a more positive evaluation over the transforming potential of the new media. According to him, who was born in the USA and is of uruguayan descent, alternative vehicles such as Democracy Now! have directly contributed for the alternative anti-system movements, from Cairo to Washington.
The most recent example is Occupy Wall Street, through which north-americans have taken to the streets to protest against the financial system. Through the alternative coverage of the the social media, this movement, which has the DNA of the youths that took Tahir square in Egypt, is being copied in several countries throughout the world, like Brazil and Germany.
Conteris emphasized some of the qualities that have ensured the success of Occupy Wall Street and its variants: the transparency of the actions; independence from political parties, governments, companies and corporations; general assemblies to exercise participative democracy; the fact that occupations are intense and without a deadline to end; it is horizontal, that is, there are no bosses or hierarchy; and the global character of its political outlook.
“People are unemployed and have lost their homes, because of banks' fraudulent schemes. What the movement is saying is that we are 99% and they are only 1%, but in spite of that, they are in control of the financial system and are accomplices of the crimes perpetrated. We have to change this”, said the journalist.