¿Sentimiento o moda?

He de reconocer que dejé mi blog totalmente abandonado durante estos meses, a pesar de que me había propuesto mantenerlo activo. Aunque lo cierto es que no ha habido mucho tiempo, y el poco que ha habido... Y os preguntaréis, ¿ y por qué razón esta escribe ahora en castellano en vez de en inglés? Pues la verdad es que no hay un motivo aparente, simplemente me dio por ahí, lo cual no quiere decir que escribir en castellano vaya a ser la tónica habitual a partir de ahora. Ni mucho menos. Mi intención es re-comenzar este blog como un nuevo proyecto, escribiendo en castellano o en inglés indistintamente, e incluso en ocasiones, en ambos. Todo dependerá del tema a tratar en cada post, porque pese a que será de índole deportiva, es un campo mucho más amplio de lo que podría parecer.

He meditado ya en numerosas ocasiones que tema elegir para el "re-estreno", y al final he decidido que para una ocasión así, tenía que ser un tema especial para mí, y que mejor que mi querido Dépor, mi equipo de toda la vida. Por desgracia, esta temporada -que comenzará en unos días siempre y cuando la huelga no se mantenga- el Dépor jugará en segunda por primera vez en mucho tiempo, por primera vez en mis 19 años vida.  Desde que tengo uso de razón recuerdo ver sus partidos, interesarme por los resultados, vivir buenos momentos y otros no lo fueron tanto. Cómo olvidar los magníficos años del "superdépor", en los que conquistamos la liga 99/00, llegamos a semifinales de la champions, le ganamos la copa del rey al Real Madrid en el Bernabéu en el ya famoso "centenariazo", etc. Pero después de esa época de grandes éxitos vinieron tiempos de vacas flacas en los que no había dinero, y consecuentemente, tampoco juego. Poco a poco fuimos descenciendo en la tabla, volviendo a adoptar la etiqueta de equipo modesto.
Y este año, llegó el desastre. El equipo no funcionó. No hubo juego, pero sobre todo nos pasó lo de siempre, no hubo gol. Si a todo eso le sumamos que la fortuna no se alió con nosotros y que todos los factores parecieron ponerse de acuerdo en nuestra contra, no resulta extraño que nos viéramos abocados al descenso de categoría.
Sin embargo, al mal tiempo buena cara. Tocó seguir apoyando al equipo, como siempre desde hace ya unos cuantos años. Pero en las últimas jornadas de la pasada campaña algo nuevo surgió. Después de ver gradas vacías durante una buena parte de la temporada, así como en las pasadas, el estadio empezó a llenarse -cierto es que bajaron los precios de las entradas- y la gente acudía en masa y bien uniformada para animar al equipo con fuerza. Y pese al descenso de categoría, parece que el apoyo sigue. Por el momento se han superado los 21.000 abonados, una cifra realmente espectacular para un equipo de la segunda división. Somos, con mucha diferencia, el equipo que cuenta con un mayor número de abonados, teniendo en cuenta además, que el Celta, nuestro gran "enemigo" -por denominarlo de alguna manera- no llega ni siquiera a los 2.000.

Después de toda esta parrafada, por fin llego a lo interesante de la cuestión, a lo que quería plantear desde un primer momento en este post. Es cierto que el equipo se ha reforzado bien, ha fichado -desde mi humilde punto de vista- con mucha cabeza, y parece que las cosas se están haciendo bien por primera vez en los últimos años. El proyecto se califica, sin dudarlo, de ilusionante cuanto menos. Pero aún así, ¿más de 21.000 abonados? ¿de dónde han salido tantos? Lo cierto es que parece que en los últimos tiempos se multiplican. Y con esto no estoy diciendo ni mucho menos que me parezca mal, puesto que soy la primera en afirmar que hay que apoyar al Dépor en los buenas y en las malas. Sin embargo, ando yo un poco "mosca" con este asunto. ¿No se tratará de una especie de fiebre? ¿De una moda? Lo cierto es que a mi a veces me lo parece. Me da la sensación de que este renovado, y a su vez repentino espíritu deportivista, es una especie de moda, algo que se lleva. La cuestión es cuánto tiempo durará, si se mantendrá esta temporada, o si en caso de que el equipo -esperemos que no sea así- no lograra ascender, también continuará.
No se como lo veis vosotros, pues esta es simplemente mi opinión. Una opinión de alguien que lleva siendo una fiel deportivista toda su vida y que se extraña de este renacer del sentiemiento blanquiazul. Ojalá me esté equivocando y se trate de que la gente se haya propuesto apoyar al Dépor de corazón y, además, a largo plazo.

Importance of the Internet in Obama´s presidential campaign

In my previous posts there has been a common fact: the importance that Internet and new technologies have nowadays in pretty much any field that I can think of.

This time I would like to focus on politics, because I have just done a project related to cyberactivism, and my group and I decided to talk about the importance of the Internet in Obama’s campaign when he was running for president back in 2008. While doing some research I found out quite some interesting things.

As Kennedy did in 1960, when he used television for the first time in a political campaign, Obama obtained a great advantage from his newfangled usage of the Internet. He was able to reach an important percentage of the young population through social networks such as facebook or twitter, where he got (and still has) many followers; benefited of WebPages like Youtube in order to upload videos of his speeches, so people could watch them whenever they wanted, with no cuts, and had the possibility of sharing them with others through email and social networks; and saved a lot of money in advertising. He also took advantage of it for fundraising, allowing people to donate money for the campaign through the party’s website, in an easy and fast way, and avoided hiring many people for the various tasks that need to be carried out in an ordinary political campaign.

But this has created a wide range of opinions about if he would have won the elections without the Internet. From my point of view, there were more things taking place besides that; Obama is a great speaker, who knew how to reach important parts of the American population such as lower-classed or the young ones, with great ideas that would turn the United States into a much better, fairer and open-minded country (not saying that it was not good, fair and open-minded until that moment). Another thing that in my opinion also favoured him a lot was being surrounded of a great team, whom helped him building a nice campaign that was well organized from the beginning and had a clear slogan.

I would like to know what you think and what your opinion about this is. Do you think phenomena like this could take place in another country´s election, like for example Spain?

Remember that we can learn many things just from a little bit of feedback!

Fight against the separation caused by the new ways of connection

New technologies, and particularly the Internet, are becoming more and more important each day in the information and communication fields.

Thanks to it we can communicate in real time with people all over the world by using several tools such as emails, social networks, or chats. Besides, we also obtain great benefits by being able to read online newspapers (which are constantly updated), watching the news and other programs live on stream, or whenever we can, and sharing this information we have obtained with other people.

Even though all these things seem to have only advantages, that´s not true. To be able to access internet or any other technologies, it is necessary to have certain infrastructures and economic level, and there are many people in the underdeveloped countries that still don´t have access to this, which nowadays means that they have a limited access to information and they are not as well communicated as they should.

These differences I´m talking about are what we know by “Digital Divide”. It has been defined as “the gap or imbalance in people´s access to digital information and technology, including physical access, economic resources and skills”.

We need to be very concerned about this, because Digital Divide is an important issue in a society in which information is power, and the Internet is the largest source we have. If people don´t have an equal access to Internet we would be creating more differences, rivalry and conflicts between individuals. What I mean by this is that if there are differences between people or between countries because some have a better political system or better economic resources, these would imply that their possibilities to access the new technologies are not the same. But in these days, to be powerful you need to be well informed and communicated, so by not being able to do so, the inequalities will keep getting bigger and bigger.

In my opinion, we should try to help and provide everybody (especially the ones with none or few resources) with the necessary tools to get involved in this new generation´s connection, in order to fight for a fairer and better world.

Journalism?

What is journalism? How would you define a journalist?

Traditionally, these questions were fairly easy to answer, because everybody had pretty much the same concept of what journalism was, as well as a journalist. The first term could have been defined as the action of informing people about what was happening around the world: in our local town, in our nation, or in a far away country; and the second one, as the people who actually carried out that action. They were the ones who worked on the radio, on TV, or writing in a newspaper.

But in the recent years things have changed a lot with the emerging of new technologies, especially with the Internet. This has become a new type of media; and I am not just speaking about digital newspapers, but about blogs and social networks, like twitter or facebook, where you can also get informed. Here is where our problem comes out; can this be considered journalism? Can the people who write or publish information by using these tools be treated as real journalists?

There is diversity of opinions relating to this issue. On the one hand, we have people who think we can, arguing that even though they may not be professionals and have not studied that career, as well as they do not work in a concrete media, they are just doing the same thing, and in many cases maybe they are doing it really well; on the other hand there are people who say we can´t, and that they ought to be considered “participatory journalists”.

And again, here we find ourselves in trouble. Why should we call them “participatory journalists” and not just journalists? What is then “participatory journalism”? Well, in the first chapter of the book “We Media”, it is defined as “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires”. Hoping things are a bit clearer now, I will proceed to explain my point of view.

After reading this definition, I understand participatory journalism and the work of participatory journalists as an act of democracy and freedom of expression, but never as a substitute of the traditional journalists who work in the media, and that have been prepared for that task. By means of this, I am not saying that the information we find in blogs or social networks isn´t useful and reliable, because a big part of it actually is, but it is not the same. For example, if I wanted to know about the earthquake and the tsunami that have just hit Japan this past weekend, I would go and read the newspaper or watch the news, but I would definitely not have a blog as my first source of information, because the professionalism of the media makes them more trustful to me.

But as I have already said, this is just a personal opinion in an ocean of diversity. The debate is still open.