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Romanian Election Enters Net Battleground |
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Wednesday, 25 January 2006 |
Underdeveloped and imperfect as it may be, the Internet in Romania, has become an information and propaganda tool, as well as a political battleground for the country?s presidential and parliamentary elections to be held November 26.
The electoral battle on the Net in Romania has become just as nasty as the fight in more traditional media. Even nastier ? as it is easier to sabotage your adversary?s virtual headquarters, than the real ones.
One of the sites of the left wing Romanian Social Democracy Party?s presidential candidate, was recently hacked and redirected to a porno site, and then to the FBI?s most wanted list. A party spokesperson told Reuters that an investigation was conducted to find the hackers, but the page continued to be sabotaged. The page now leads to a Web site displaying the HTML and PDF versions of a book titled ?The Secret Biography of Ion Iliescu?.
Curiously, the Romania-based Web site iliescu.ro remains untouched by hackers.
The Liberal Party?s candidate Theodor Stolojan?s Web site was also re-routed recently to the official site of the current Romanian president Emil Constantinescu, who is not even running for a second term.
Earlier this year, the local elections marked a historic moment for the Internet in Romania. For the first time, the Web was used to disseminate political messages, as the most important parties and candidates set up electoral Web sites. But is it worth using the Internet in the political battle? Iliescu?s party doesn?t seem to think so, as it kept allowing one of its sites to be constantly hacked and redirected.
Still, in a country with a population of almost 23 million, Romania?s estimated 600,000 Internet users could be an important electoral target.
According to Alina Nemes of the Romania Online portal, about 100,000 Romanians pay for Internet services from home, while a large part of the Net population gets connected from work. About 300,000 people are heavy Internet users, while another 300,000 access the Web occasionally.
Those numbers are few compared to many Western countries. However, Romania?s Internet users are likely to play an important role in the elections. Fewer than fifty percent of the voting population made it to the polls in the local elections earlier this year, whereas the Internet users comprising the more educated, younger, dynamic Romanians, are more likely to vote. And they are more likely to play the role of opinion leaders, thus influencing the vote of others.
The Web sites also provide valuable information to thousands of Romanian voters living abroad, or just visiting a foreign country.
In the last couple of years there has been a simple and fast way for them to access news from home. They just open their browser and type in the address of their favorite newspaper?s Web site.
Virtually all major Romanian media outlets are on the Net, from the popular commercial station ProTV, to the nationalist weekly magazine Romania Mare.
But there is a difference between being on the Net and having a meaningful Internet presence, and many Romanian newspaper Web sites still have a long way to go, before they reach professional standards.
With a few exceptions, namely Monitorul.ro, the Web versions of Romanian newspapers are nothing more than an electronic reflection of the paper-based articles. ?It seems there are some Web sites in Romania that were produced early on, like 2-3 years ago, and they haven?t been touched since,? said Toby Smith, an Albuquerque-based American journalist, who spent one-and-a-half years in Romania as a Fulbright visiting professor at the Bucharest University.
Smith has continued to monitor the Romanian media on the Net, and, although he sees progress, he cited poor navigation instructions, limited archives and few links as typical faults.
?My guess is that [many Romanian newspapers] probably don?t have anyone working on their sites,? Smith said. ?They have someone setting up the sites for them; but you have to have your own people working on a site. You have to consistently maintain it, and update it, and change it.?
Lack of resources may be one of the reasons why most Romanian newspaper Web sites have not adjusted their content to the specificity of the Net and to the surfers? needs. According to site tracker data, about 80 percent of the people who read Romanian newspapers online come from the .com domain. Newspaper Web sites have made no particular effort to offer them customized information about the electoral process and the voting procedures for Romanian citizens who are in foreign countries.
The role of giving specific election information on the Net has been assumed, instead, by ISPs, Net portals and young entrepreneurs who have started dedicated Web sites.
Romania Online, the leading Romanian portal operated by PCNet, launched Politics.ro, offering information on the seven main parties and their candidates, as indicated by the polls. ?We feature all the parties or presidential candidates who have at least one percent in the polls,? said Alina Nemes, Romania Online?s executive manager. Politics.ro publishes a resume for each presidential candidate, his/her full political program, each party?s statute, political program and leadership.
?The idea was to gather in one place all the ?true? information available in this campaign, so that ordinary citizens could take a good decision after being able to analyze real data,? Nemes said.
The site also contains up-to-date political news, pre-electoral polls realized by professional institutes and interactive online polls. Politics.ro?s first online questionnaire asked visitors if they intended to vote. More than 1,200 answered in the first week after the site was launched on November 7. Over 76 per cent said they definitely intended to vote.
On Election Day, the site will publish immediate data on voter turnout and exit poll results.
Kappa, another ISP, teamed up with the daily Adevarul to offer Election.ro, with the same kind of information as Politics.ro. Other Web sites dedicated to electoral information are Alegeri2000 (Elections2000) and Politica.ro, both letting visitors vote in their own Internet polls.
Other sites went even further.
A couple of Romanian students, one in Bucharest, the other in Budapest, thought an interactive political game would be a good idea to interest people in the electoral process. They call their site, Electoral2000.ro, the first Romanian initiative for online democracy.
Besides catching up on political news and programs of the main candidates and parties, visitors to Electoral2000.ro can participate in a fantasy game where they can create their own virtual political party and compete online. The site?s creators want to transform the site in an ?online democracy portal? after the elections. They believe the entire political process could be carried out on the Web in future.
That future may be closer than most people think.
?In 1998, I knew of only one Internet caf? in Bucharest,? said Toby Smith. ?When I came back in 1999 there were dozens, and they were clean, friendly, cheery, bright, pleasant places to go. This tells me no matter how bad the economy is, the Internet will keep pushing on, and more people will use it.?
Already, the Internet has started making a difference in Romanian political life. Although Web penetration is only nine percent in cities with a population over 50,000 and three percent nationwide, it has managed to inject some fresh air into political discourse.
?The electoral campaign in Romania has changed dramatically,? said George Popescu, a journalism lecturer specializing in Internet communication at the Bucharest University.
?Already the Webmasters know how to exploit the possibilities of multimedia and to compensate the frigid language and the sober speeches with various pictures, sounds and clips,? Popescu said of the political parties? sites.
Traditional Romanian newspapers have so far failed to bring anything new to the Web. The good news, though, is that other companies are stepping in to pioneer online journalism and bring a new type of media message in the age of the Internet.
?It?s a promising start,? said Alina Nemes, ?as this is the first electoral year when Romania has specialized sites for the elections, and when the preliminary results on Election Day will be published very quickly on the Internet.?
It may not be much when compared to the US or even to other East-European countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic, but it?s a start. |
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