By means of Supreme Decree Nº 2731, the Government has created The Social Networks Management dependent on the Ministry of Communication. This legal text, in its preamble, states that so far, the production and spreading of the government's information through the social networks –which has become one (if not the most) significant way to spread valuable information– has been limited.

The official purposes stated in this Decree are the following:

  1. To develop dissemination, consultation and interaction strategies by the Government towards the cyber community.
  2. To improve the information and communication platforms in order to publish the public management through the use of social networks.
  3. To promote the use of social networks within the society.

The Ruling Government Party (Movimiento al Socialismo - MAS) has established that the negative result obtained from the past referendum carried out on February 21st, in which opposition's option won was due to the use of social networks in which both, opposition and community, played a vital role to both promote its proposal and criticize the government, an act that has been qualified as dirty war.

The highest authorities of State, after hearing the referendum's results, mentioned the need for the social networks to be regulated suggesting for this purpose, the forfeit of any statement given out in social networks against the government.

The opposition and society in general condemned this suggestion alleging that the social network's regulation would go against the freedom of expression principle.

Indeed, the creation of this public dispensation indicates that, for now, the government strongly desires to take part more actively inside web forums.

In this regard, inside Bolivia the most used social networks are Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. The President, Mr. Evo Morales -the day after this Decree was published- created his own Twitter account under the name "@evoespueblo". Despite the fact that the first messages shown in his profile didn't mark trends, the number of his followers is still increasing.

However, it is important to write down that no authority has been designated yet to be responsible for the Social Networks Management.

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