A tribuna virtual: informação política nos blogs durante a eleição de 2008

Abstract

This paper analyzes the political information available in blogs on a competitive scenario - the election for mayor of Sao Paulo in 2008. As it was intended to evaluate the capacity of pages to attract readers and influence the agenda of the press, the blogs chosen were from two journalists (Ricardo Noblat and Reinaldo Azevedo), two politicians (José Dirceu and Paulo Renato), two candidates (Gilberto Kassab and Marta Suplicy), and the blog Campanha no Ar, created by Folha de S. Paulo - these are players with high capacity to influence the political arena because of the symbolic capital that they have in this field. Folha was chosen for comparison with the traditional press. With this selection, the work performed a content analysis of pages and an assessment with specific criteria for the Internet. Thus, the results confirm the thesis that there is a kind of "elite blogs", whose actors have greater ability to attract readers and journalists; the press is the main source of information for blogs, but is also influenced by them; that the journalistic format is still a model used to generate credibility, although it is going through changes on the Internet; and that interaction with readers is still basically reactive and its use is stronger for political marketing, although there is potential for surveillance by the citizens and pluralization in the debates