It’s interesting to watch how the American culture is coming into the Dominican Republic. My work at times takes me into some of the social networks like Twitter and Facebook, where today I stumbled on a Twitter trend clamoring for Justin Bieber to extend his Believe Tour to the Dominican Republic.

The point I actually found interesting is how just a few years ago the internet barely existed in the DR. Now it has become deeply rooted in the country with kids being able to access the internet even from deep within the campos (small rural towns). The fan club has been trying to get signatures for their internet petition to convince the pop star to come to the Dominican Republic. Judging from the over 14,000 likes the Justin Bieber Dominican Republic “official” fan club has it is safe to say that the internet is now playing an important role in the lives of many youths here. There is even a “Believe Tour to the Dominican Republic” twitter trend that is reaching the top trends for the Dominican Republic.

Internet Dangers

One of the problems I see with this is that while the younger ones are learning how to use the internet, most of the parents really don’t have a clue what is on it or the dangers that the internet can pose. In the campos you find a large percentage of the parents that have little or no reading skill and even fewer that can read English which is the primary facebook language.

Well, it should be interesting to see if all this activity will produce results. As of this time there appears to be no interest from the Believe Tour managers in making a change, but one thing kids have learned here in the DR are welgas (protests). Who knows, a couple more internet petitions and we might just be seeing Justin Bieber step off the plane in Santo Domingo!