Por: Aldo Iván Ibarra Avilés
The article I read was titled “Split
vote sends one clear message in Italy: No to Austerity” and it was published in
The New York Times. The article refers to the recent elections in Italy.
Elections were held today in the middle of a though economic and political situation
in Italy and Europe. By the time the article was published, results and exit
polls could not give an official winner, but the tendency showed that any party
would have a majority in neither the Congress nor the Senate. It signals as a
strong reference for this result the surprisingly Internet campaign from 2009
from a former comedian Beppe Grillo. Another reason for this preliminary result
is the people reaching a disappointment and anger status due to the austerity
measures and new taxes in Italy.
I relate this article to the
reading The New Political Fault Line in the part where it talks about the fault
line where voters have changed with the time. It signals the American case
after 1964 and part of it is because of the use of television. The text says “politicians
no longer needed legions of party workers to get their messages across; they
could effectively establish personal connections with their constituents using
television advertising”. In today`s elections in Italy we can see how this
theory has evolved into an Internet and social media advertising and
campaigning. Also, is related to the part where it says that voters in
elections no longer cast their vote because of their sympathy with a party, now
they are more apathetics towards certain parties and politicians, in this case
was their vote against taxes and austerity plans in Italy.
To conclude, I would say that is
getting harder for many political parties, politicians, and governments to
control the voters and public opinion. In the past, there was not a big
spectrum of media to inform people, campaigns were more a face-to-face type,
and the messages they delivered were through radio and primitive televisions
advertising. Nowadays we have a more active media display for campaigning. We
have TV for reaching thousands and millions of people, newspapers have spread
also with the time, and finally, the Internet issue. I insist with this idea of
the Twitter effect, a tweet in one part of the world can create a disaster in
another different part of the world. If we add the recent worldwide economy
crisis and governments unable to sort it, we can probably reach a political
world without political parties and politicians at all, as we saw in Italy
where the comedian Grillo started a movement through Internet and years later,
it gained such a big power and influence in people that will probably led them
to take certain political control in Italy.
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