A Desmancha-Prazeres
Howard Dean, Ned Lamont e Ségolène Royal ganharam os respectivos partidos graças à blogosfera. Curiosamente, chegado o momento de consultar o conjunto do eleitorado, através dos meios tradicionais, as coisas não lhes correram/correm tão bem. Independentemente disso, a tendência para a utilização política da Internet veio para ficar. A seguir às eleições para o Congresso, o NYT dava conta da quantidade de bloggers recrutados para as campanhas democratas e republicanas. Por cá, o Presidente da República, o primeiro-ministro, o coordenador do Bloco, o Prof. Marcelo e a jovem Elisa também já comunicaram directamente pela net. Esta semana, o Diário de Notícias dava conta do fenómeno. E o próprio Paulo Gorjão interrogava-se sobre «quando serão as primeiras eleições em que teremos blogonautas a acompanhar in loco as comitivas partidárias nas clássicas voltas a Portugal?» De facto, visto da blogosfera, isto parece tudo muito bem. Mas na segunda-feira, o artigo de Jackie Ashley, no Guardian, trouxe-nos um merecido banho de realidade:
«Aren't citizens "flexing their muscles" as [Gordon] Brown says? Well, yes and no. Some are. But the first thing to remember is that a large slice of the population is completely missing from this brave new internet world. (…)The politically enfranchised, active internet community is very small indeed. If Guardian sites are any guide, bloggers tend to be disproportionately young, male, angry and rightwing [já devíamos ter reparado]. Busy parents, people working long hours and pensioners are rather less likely to be flexing their muscles by blogging or searching political sites [daí o Canhoto não ter mais posts].
Again, you could protest: isn't that just like pre-internet politics? Labour party meetings were always dominated by people who happened to have the time to get to them and - because they had to be motivated too - by people who were more committed and angrier than the average voter. This is exactly the point. In the old days, nobody really thought Labour party meetings, or Tory constituency associations, were representative of the country at large. A party which wanted to win power had to search out and try to convert the others. The danger is that we forget that old lesson, and naively think of the internet and the bloggers as the only voice of the people. In practical terms, this could privilege the better-off and younger against the interests of working-class and older Britain. (…) There are other dangers too. We should be nervous when politicians start boasting, as they are, that the net allows them to bypass irritatingly persistent, difficult interviewers such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman. Obviously, they need to be scrutinised and cross-questioned by well-briefed interrogators, secure enough in their jobs to push the point. Democracy demands it. Putting up your own website, conducting online question-and-answer sessions, is a doddle by comparison. They allow the politician to control the terms of the exchange and never face a public challenge on questions they don't want to answer.
This is not a call to ignore the net or stop using the excellent research tools online. But we need to avoid easy hype. Most people are not cyber-citizens, they are living real, complicated lives in the real world. And that's where politicians should be too, rather than trying to surf off down the superhighway.»
