Introduction, Media, Politics, and Democratization in Latin America

:::::: Introduction ::::::

Media, Politics, and Democratization in Latin America
by  Javier Campo, Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli


This issue has a predecessor from decades ago: Culture in the Age of Mass Media (Burton and Franco, 1978). Forty years may have gone by, but some problems and major concepts remain: resistance, ideological manipulation (though today we use the term “hegemonic cultural influence”), mass communication, and new media technologies. Latin America was then ruled by some of history’s bloodiest military dictatorships, while today the return of right-wing governments after a decade of popular governments is disconcerting. The hopeful ending of Burton and Franco’s introduction (“This repression has been unable to destroy the people’s culture, which continues to find avenues to express resistance” [1978: 10]) has led to a fruitful harvest in recent years, quickly provoking a backlash (often violent). Today we are witnessing a substantial investment in the militarization of police forces and electronic surveillance systems—in particular, the social networks used by young cyber-activists who have grown up with the Internet and, as Linda Herrera (2014: 2–3) points out regarding the riots in Egypt (the “Twitter revolution”), are accustomed to defending their political agendas online.

NEW LAP Issue! Media, Politics, and Democratization in Latin America

Edited by: Javier Campo and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli

Issue 220 | Volume 45 | Number 3 | May 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

This special issue of Latin American Perspectives investigates a matter that has undergone critical transformations in recent years. From the period of progressive governments to the current neoliberal restoration, the media went from being thought of as a public service to a private business. This issue features articles on Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and Argentina and covers a broad disciplinary spectrum of studies: from the laws of communication put into practice or projected, to the deregulation of the most advanced legislations of Latin America, to communication rights, audiovisual analysis, memory studies and historiographies of the Latin American left.

The editors were committed to organizing a special issue about the favorable democratization of the media, but in the process, the media landscape was transformed into a reactionary onslaught of the monopolies of information and communication; a process that ended in the electoral victories of right-wing corporatists.

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