El Salvador enters the blogosphere

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It’s a great new engine of democracy that will open up public debate and end politicians’ and the mainstream media’s information monopoly. No, wait — it’s an insidious form of, um, ‘cybernetic proselytism’ that will damage democracy by allowing slanderers and demagogues to stir up trouble.

It seems that El Salvador is in the throes of a debate about the growing role of blogs and the Internet in shaping public opinion, as Wisconsin blogger Tim Muth details in a post at Harvard’s very useful Global Voices Online project. Tim himself writes one of the most interesting and informed blogs about any Central American country that La Plaza has come across.

Though most Salvadorans have far more limited Internet access than the average U.S. or European citizen, growing numbers of them are tapping into the blogosphere. The phenomenon is drawing attention from Salvadoran newspaper reporters, some of whom are starting their own blogs. In La Plaza’s view, most Latin American countries, including El Salvador, can only stand to benefit from an increase in blog traffic and opinion-sharing.

Most Latin American newspapers have small circulations compared with their U.S. counterparts. For example, two of the largest, Reforma of Mexico City and Folha de Sao Paulo of Brazil, each sell only 200,000 to 300,000 copies. Aside from Cuba (which has its own free-speech problems), many Latin countries also suffer from high illiteracy rates that further impede the swapping of information and ideas. In time, the Internet could help remedy that. La Plaza says: Oye, bloggers, estamos esperando tu opinion!

Posted by Reed Johnson in Mexico City