Galery

1

On the one hand, Antonis Samaras is not so specific, as he tries to mitigate things and so is forced to say things in order to satisfy all listeners. This is a classic example of populist politics. On the other hand, things said by Alexis Tsipras sound concrete, but they are not. Nobody knows whether he will ultimately first cancel the Memorandum and then renegotiate it, whether he will cancel it politically or legally, whether on 28 June, if elected prime minister, he will go to the Eurogroup, having cancelled the Memorandum before that or if he will go for negotiations. Nobody really knows what he will do to resolve the crisis and the financial problems of the country. On the one hand, SYRIZA wants to satisfy its initial supporters, i.e. radical leftists, who are against the euro and for the return of the drachma. On the other hand, he does not want to scare the new voters drawn from previous PASOK voters, who are for the euro and the European Union. Alexis Tsipras was forced to present an economic programme a few days ago, namely to stop the various positions expressed by party representatives in the media.

Despite all the other messages, people who are against the Memorandum will vote for SYRIZA. And here I would like to note that if elected, Alexis Tsipras will end up in a deadlock. He would either have to do what he promised, i.e. to cancel the memorandum and on the next day after the elections, he will have to convince voters that they will have to make greater financial sacrifices. It is because we continue to have no money. The other option is not to cancel the Memorandum because he will realize that it is still impossible for Greece to stand alone on its own two feet and then his electorate will be dissatisfied again. This is a deadlock difficult to handle.

What is the role of social media in the elections on 6 May and in the upcoming ones?

I would like to give you a personal example: I am very active in social media, many people know me from them and generally, I often use them in my activities. However, it was enough to only once appear on television in order for different people to begin to call me, former classmates whom I had not seen for years to seek me and to express their support. I mean that the power of traditional media is very strong. Twitter, for example, is a community of tens of thousands of people but voters in Greece are 10 million. We are not yet in an era when social media are competing with traditional ones in forming the public debate.

What they do is that they bring people together and help them connect with other people. People who are not connected either professionally or socially or even geographically acquaint with each other. They help people to connect and to take common action, as we did with "Open Society".

Social media provide straightness. They put citizens in a position of equality with journalists. Once I had written in my blog an article in response to an article by a very famous journalist. He had declared his support for the return to the drachma and I explained in my article why this argument was a bad choice. The article I wrote was read between 20 - 25,000 times. This is the circulation of one of the major newspapers. Before the existence of social media, an ordinary person like me would never have had the opportunity to reply to a journalist on such an equal basis. This connection helps journalists themselves as they have a direct contact with readers and are criticized more directly. In this way, they become more careful and try to gather more information. This connection with social media will be of great benefit to traditional media.

Otherwise, I am one of those who do not believe in citizen journalism, or that all of us can become journalists by using social media. This is an occupation that you should know how to do and to be dedicated to it. I do not think the need for journalism will stop. It will simply change positively due to the presence of social media.