Our Raison d'Etre

 

My blogging has been rather light lately, to put it very mildly, and I notice that I'm not the only one in the Maltese blogosphere to have slowed down. In my case, a rather busy three-week trip and its afermath disrupted my blogging habits, although I consider my blog to be still active.

Jacques and Fausto have, incidentally, raised the question of the Maltese political blogosphere's raison d'etre in recent posts. Fausto's advice is to 'keep blogging but keep on doing it for fun and not to change the world'. True enough, but I think that deep down we'd all like to think that we're contributing something as well.

There are big issues that, I feel, certainly deserve to be commented upon by local bloggers. Most of these are local but not necessarily day to day issues. I think that immigration, the separation between church and state and the general direction of the Government's economic policy, and its results, are good examples of such issues. International issues can be worth blogging about from a Maltese perspective too, but I personally prefer to focus on international issues which have strong local implications.

Can our local blogs make a difference locally? We mustn't be too ambitious but I do believe that if we use the tool intelligently, we can achieve some meaningful impact in these limited but important areas. In other countries blogs have had particular success in exerting pressure on that part of the mainstream media that chooses to define itself as being politically 'neutral' but doesn't always live up to that claim. In Malta, Gardjola in particular have done a good job in this regard, especially in relation to the Times. I think it's also possible to help form opinion. However, I consider it unlikely that a blog is ever going to win over people of a completely different political viewpoint. It just might be possible to influence those who are very close to one on the political spectrum and my own 'target readership', to the extent that there is one, has always been people who share my basic political assumptions.