Andy Halsall wrote:
Of course you've also limited the debate to those who have the
capability and the inclination to participate in such a debate on a
foreign broadcaster's website, whatever language(s) it's hosted in.
Very good point, although I don't know how prevalent internet access is in
Venezuela and how common internet cafe type establishments are.
Interesting discussion. I've often thought about this topic and
selection biases, based on my anecdotal experiences as a largely
monolingual visitor who spent 3 months living in Venezuela. Of all the
(10<x<20 I guess) Venezuelans I've met and talked with (some f2f there,
some online, some here in Europe), the great majority were all pretty
hostile to Chávez. However all were to some degree English speakers; my
Spanish simply wasn't up to talking to anyone else. I have no doubt
that a more representative cross-section of Venezeuela would've included
a lot more Chávez enthusiasts.
In my limited experience, there are a good number of 'net cafes around.
Well, it's not Cuba, at least. But hanging out on foreign news sites
filling in questionaires may well be the kind of activity that is more
tempting if conducted from home with flat-rate billing, rather than a
pay-per-minute seat in a crowded net cafe. Still, at least asking the
survey questions in Spanish would be polite. Even if it doesn't reach
the folk living in slums around Caracas, worrying more about food and
electricity than TCP/IP, it would be a step in the right direction.
There are other mechanisms beyond surveys (eg. reading blogs from
community groups) that can help with understanding others' perspectives,
but they're not so amenable to simpleminded maths or as cheap to
implement as a Web poll...
cheers,
Dan
--
http://danbri.org/
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