Twitter has been used by one of the most important Argentine newspaper to follow the 2011 Argentine presidential elections. The newspaper took advantage of the privilege enjoyed by the internet during the electoral prohibition period and follow comments and influences of politicians on Twitter whereby tracking in real time the numbers of tweets they received even after the ban for releasing electoral poll results was declared.

Following Manuel Castells (2001, 2009), the use of these real-time devices can be seen as both a need of our time and a practices which provides our societies with one of its most distinctive features, the possibility that information flows overcome time barriers. The consequences generate by these practices is still under discussion, but the device probed to be an effective way for candidates’ performance in the elections. Please use the link below to access the short essay in English and non-academic draft in Spanish.

First short academic essay in English

Short non-academic version. First draft in Spanish – Oct 2011