Category Archives: Costa Rica

Twitter and Facebook part of Costa Rica election

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 7:52 am UK

tsecrtwitter Electing a woman to be your head of state isn’t that big a deal these days.

The latest country to join a long list of states with women leaders is Costa Rica: in the presidential election conducted yesterday, the winner by a comfortable margin is Laura Chinchilla Miranda, the first woman to become head of state in this Central American republic.

Chinchilla’s victory also vividly demonstrates democracy in action in a country that’s in a part of the world where such freedom of expression has a pretty poor track record over the years – with Costa Rica being a notable exception.

I lived in Costa Rica during most of the 80s, and so it’s a place that still has close interest for me (family and friends there, too). What I found especially interesting about this presidential election is the role of social networks like Twitter and Facebook and how people used them during the election period including voting day yesterday.

According to a concise report in La Nación, Costa Rica’s most influential newspaper, such social networks played a big role in how people shared comment and opinion. Here’s my loose translation from La Nación’s Spanish-language report, “Redes sociales también vivieron esta elección”:

Minute by minute, many people followed everything connected with the elections held yesterday via Twitter and Facebook.

For most of the day, "votocr" (the hashtag used on Twitter to address this issue) was the most-used word on Twitter in the Spanish language. [What I’d describe as a ‘trending topic.’]

Costa Ricans used Twitter mainly to discuss the news, but also to report on the atmosphere at polling stations. Some posted photographs.

While there were no definitive numbers at press time, at certain times of the day nearly 1,000 messages were posted on Twitter every hour with information on the elections in Costa Rica.

[…] La Nación’s Facebook profile recorded about 250 comments at press time. The presidential candidates (in particular, Laura Chinchilla, Otton Solis and Otto Guevara) also generated participation within their own profiles through various news and comments made during the day.

Not only individuals used Twitter but also institutions such as the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones, Costa Rica’s electoral authority, which tweeted updates of voting count estimates after the polls closed.

A good example of a country where freedom of expression is the norm and people can make use of whatever communication channels they want to and are able to access. According to Internet World Stats, Costa Rica has the highest internet penetration in Central America at over one-third of the population.

See also Online Videos add Humor to Presidential Elections at Global Voices.

Pura vida, Costa Rica!

Related post:

First report of Costa Rica quake on Twitter

Posted on January 12, 2009 at 10:46 pm UK

twitter-temblor

Last Thursday January 8, an earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale struck Costa Rica in Central America.

My wife Laura and I have a strong interest in Costa Rica as we have family there and, indeed, lived there during much of the 1980s. Thankfully, family there are safe and well, gracias a Dios.

Not the case for everyone, sadly, as to date, 19 people have died with 23 officially missing. The government declared a state of emergency as property and infrastructure damage rose to over $100 million.

The disaster of course is a news event and has been and continues to be widely reported in mainstream media worldwide.

Interesting to note that the first report of the quake happened on Twitter as the English-language weekly newspaper The Tico Times reports:

While nearly everyone in Costa Rica felt the tremors, the first published report of Thursday’s earthquake came not from the radio, television or newswires, but from the social networking Web site Twitter.

The report, posted by Twitter user "reiterstahl" at 1:22 pm, consisted of a single exclamation: "TEMBLORRRRRR!!!!!!" Soon after, the site was abuzz with news updates, requests for help and information and offers of aid and donations for quake victims.

Another indicator of how Twitter is moving in from the edge.

If you’d like to help relief efforts in Costa Rica, an effective way is by donating money either directly to the Cruz Roja Costarricense (website in Spanish) or online at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies website.

Thanks if you do.

A little Latin flavour

Posted on October 19, 2008 at 2:08 pm UK

alaf-fiesta08 A part of the world that’s not constantly front-of-mind for many people in the UK is Latin America.

One country that’s an integral part of that region is Costa Rica, nowadays a popular holiday destination and a place I call a second home having lived there for much of the 1980s. It’s also my wife’s first home, something she focuses on with her blog.

So it was a real pleasure to spend much of yesterday afternoon immersed in sights and sounds of Latin America at the 2008 Anglo Latin American Fiesta in the Kensington Town Hall, London.

Organized by the Anglo Latin American Foundation in conjunction with the embassies of the individual countries of Latin America, this annual charitable event aims to provide a platform for raising funds to support children’s charities throughout Latin America.

It’s also a tremendous opportunity for taking lots of photos which I did with my ever-surprising Nokia N95 8GB.

All those photos – 64 of them – are up on Flickr. I’ve also produced a video of them with the excellent Animoto, adding some appropriate Latin music:

A big highlight of the day was an appearance by Mexteca, arguably the best Mexican mariachi band in the UK.

They really added to the ambiente auténtico, playing for over an hour. I captured them at the start with about 6 minutes of video from which you can get a great sense of the crowd and the atmosphere.

¡Sin duda, un buen día!

Democracy in action

Posted on May 9, 2006 at 7:47 am UK

Yesterday, a new president of Costa Rica was sworn in during a televised ceremony that was a model of the democratic process that you take for granted in western countries but not at all in most of Latin America.

There are multiple reasons why this interests me. First of all, I lived in Costa Rica for much of the 1980s and new president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias was also Costa Rica’s president for much of the time when I was there. Now he’s back again after a near 20-year gap (for concise background on why, see this BBC analysis).

My wife Laura (who’s Costa Rican/British) was especially keen as she could watch the inauguration ceremony live on her computer via an internet broadcast.

So she had multiple browser connections open to TV stations in Costa Rica – state-owned Canal 13 and commercial broadcaster Teletica Canal 7 – who were broadcasting live via the net. Just as well our DSL broadband connection here in Amsterdam is a pretty fat one!

Canal 13′s broadcast was free to all, but the video quality was poor especially at full screen (as the picture of Oscar Arias above probably indicates, taken with my Nokia N70). Plus overall content is far more limited with this broadcaster.

In contrast, Canal 7 has an interesting deal. You sign up and pay $20 via PayPal and you then get high-quality live video that you would not be able to get otherwise unless you were in Costa Rica and could receive the TV signal. That $20 is credited for access to a wide range of other video content, again not available without that subscription.

Not an unusual business model and highly appealing to Ticos (and people like me) who are outside the country and have a strong desire to see, live, what’s going on in an event like a presidential inauguration.

The quality of Canal 7′s video was very good, even in full-screen viewing (this pic shows the Canal 7 website where you can see a live video feed in a window).

Unfortunately, at the time of the actual presidential handover ceremony, Canal 7′s servers or their video data link to the US must have been heavily overloaded as we couldn’t keep a connection going. Hence Canal 13′s photo of the new president rather than Canal 7.

In any event, I found it great to be able to see the action in Costa Rica as it was happening, in real time.

Democracy and technology in action.