In the morning of November11 started the 4th Symposium of the Cuban Culture in the Websites at Casa del Alba in Havana, with a debate on the new discursive ways in the web.
Rafael de la Osa, director of Cubarte and president of the organizing committee of the event welcomed the participants. He asserted this opportunity is worth to exchange experiences between professionals of the Cuban websites linked to the national culture, because it is necessary while “there is still lack of dialogue on the application of the new technologies in information and communication in the procedure of the content, he said.
In the debate, panelist Alejenadro Ulloa, author of Esquinas blog asserted that in the national press “there is still lack of understanding in the media’s dynamics, because in the web they are totally different from the traditional ones, above all, to get the impact in the new publics who are also different.”
Maria del Carmen Ramon, publisher of Cubahora website, highlighted the appropriateness to change the way of thinking of those professionals that are still distinguishing the job of the traditional journalist working in the web, and noted that many of the works in the Cuban websites are published as they are written for the printed press without taking into consideration the hypermedia narrative codes. Livia Reyes, director of the Information Center for the Press said it is not possible to make a group of work without taking into consideration those inter- disciplines and the cultural competitions of its members, and highlighted the example of Cubahora, where the journalists share the leading role with photographers, designers, and so on.
Part of the debate was in recognition to the blog sphere as a space of participation of the people and an alternative to the traditional media speech.
Harold Cardenas, one of the authors of Joven Cuba (Young Cuba) asserted that “We bloggers have to fill the gap of journalism done in Cuba and recognize what to be a citizen is.” Cardenas added that “the citizens need to calm the thirst of participating and the blog is the means we have found for this, but it is not only a space for participation but also for transformation.”
Ulloa said that “if we are in the web, if we have a blog, we have a responsibility as citizen, precisely, because we are in a public space, from where, we can also influence on the people.”
This symposium will last until November 15 and it will close granting the Web Palm 2013 prize that this year will include two categories: a prize to the best radio station in the web and the best personal website of cultural profile.
