International Seminar

 

Media and Democratization in Latin America

A B S T R A C T S

Enrique E. Sánchez Ruiz (Department of Communication, University of Guadalajara, Mexico), “Factual Powers and Authoritarian Governance: ‘Televisa’s Law’ as a Case Study.”

 

The paper reflects on the status of the media as “factual powers” (as opposed to “formal”, or “constitutional powers”) which constitute an obstacle to the consolidation of a democratic order, when they are highly concentrated as in the case of the television industry in several Latin American countries. “Authoritarian”, rather than “democratic governance” might be emerging, which in its turn would reverse the trend towards democratization. The case of Televisa’s recent show of force by pushing legislation at their convenience (even though it was later on invalidated by the Supreme Court of Justice) serves as a case study on the extreme concentration of a factual power as a danger to democratic governance.

 

 

Rick Rockwell (School of Communication, American University), “Reflections of Hegemony:  Latin American Television’s View of the U.S. and Democracy.”

 

This paper will review how U.S. hegemony has had an impact on Latin American media systems and how that has affected democratization in the region.  As a basis for the review, the paper will use a new content analysis of at least six Latin American networks – the content analysis will include hundreds of hours of viewing information from 2007 – to reach conclusions about what Latin American television is contributing to the discussion of democratization and hegemony.  The paper will also include a theoretical framing of hegemony to underpin the overall analysis.

 

 

Fernando Coronil (Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan), “Bodies of Evidence: The Truth of the Media in the 2002 Coup against Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.”

 

This paper will examine how the media constructed bodies of evidence in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. The paper will focus on the interplay between images and words, showing how through the interplay of video footage and narratives the private media constructed an account of the Llaguno massacre that became a turning point in the events that led to the ousting of Chavez.

 

 

Rosa Maria Alfaro Moreno (CALANDRIA, Peru), “Advances and Setbacks of Alternative Communication in a Democratic Context.”

 

With the rise of democracy in Latin America, alternative communication has changed its path. It goes through a process of expansion, since it migrates from the realm of small media, without abandoning them, to society and the changes its demands. It enters public and political arenas, repositioning itself in civil society, and broadening its connections to development. In cultural terms, alternative communication becomes a mediating space that promotes democratization. It even feels empowered to demand changes in the mainstream mass media, defining them as public services and instances that enhance citizenship. In other words, the communicative model begins to be legitimated as valid to the whole society. This complex and rich process generates some confusions, which have note yet been solved by several of the new experiences. In particular, the traditional leftist identity has been mixed up the neopopulism that represents a current threat to misunderstood democracies.

 

 

Rousiley Maia (School of Communication, UFMG, Brazil), “Media and Democratic Effects of Civic Association for Public Deliberation in Brazil.”

 

The aim of this paper is to investigate how different types of civic associations use mass media to promote public deliberation, as follows: (a) by redefining legal norms and the processing of details concerning the common good; (b) by making a critique of hegemonic discourses of exploitation and injustice; (c) by thematizing solutions for perceived problems and institutional innovation. I explore two cases, taking into account the recent Brazilian redemocratization process: the national referendum on firearm trade prohibition and the Program to Combat Children and Teenager Work in some regions of the country. My analyses show that there is a need to judge the democratic effects of civic associations in the public sphere, making distinctions between a variety of association abilities, settings and purpose, and also between the patterns of dialogic cooperation generated by interlocutors in the media domain.

 

 

Silvio Waisbord (School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University), “The Environmental Story that Wasn’t: Advocacy, Journalism, and the Asambleismo Movement in Argentina.”

 

This paper analyzes how news management strategies coupled with journalistic conventions affect news coverage of the Asamblea Ciudadana Ambiental Guelguaychú in Argentina, a social movement against the establishment of two paper mill plants in the Rio Uruguay. Since 2003, the Asamblea has received wide attention in local and national news. Media advocacy has been central to the Asamblea’s political goals. This case offers an opportunity to examine the role of the news media in the definition of environmental risk in a country with weak environmental policies, and a weak tradition of environmental reporting. News coverage of the Asamblea confirms the media’s penchant for sensational and dramatic events. Also, it suggests that the mainstream media does not necessarily portray social movements negatively. Because the media largely relies on official sources in setting news frames, shifting views about the movement among political elites the focus on news events takes attention a way from structural processes and environmental policies.

 

 

Carlos de la Torre (FLACSO, Ecuador), “Media and Democracy in Ecuador’s 2006 Presidential Election"

 

This paper analyzes the role and influence of the media in the 2006 presidential election in Ecuador from various angles. We examine how the media approached the election and how the candidates used the media in conjunction with traditional means of voter mobilization. The 2006 presidential election featured two candidates that proudly declared themselves political “outsiders”--- the left-leaning economist Rafael Correa and the billionaire businessman Alvaro Noboa. They battled in a two round competition in which the media shaped the electoral arena in at least two important ways. First, a number of important media outlets reinforced the public’s “anti-political” mindset by featuring coverage that devalued political parties, politicians, and the institutional framework of democracy. Once the stage was set for the battle of the “outsiders,” a number of important media outlets opted for coverage that favored one or the other of the contenders.  The 2006 election also demonstrates how traditional mechanisms used to appeal to voters such as clientelism, mass meetings, and car caravans continue to figure prominently campaigns and comfortably co-exist with the candidates’ electronic outreach through television, radio and the internet.

 

 

Scott Desposato (Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego), "Issue Ownership? Comparing and Explaining Campaign Themes in Brazil, Venezuela, and Chile."

 

What are the main political issues in Latin America's democracies? How are these issues evolving over time, and why? In this chapter, I examine the presidential and legislative campaigns of Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela. For each country, I review the main political issues going into the campaign and examine how they are manifest in political advertisements, debates, and candidate platforms. I show how political institutions and political culture have shaped debates in these countries, and offer suggestions for political reforms to improve discourse in each.

 

 

Chappell Lawson (Department of Political Science, MIT), "Looking Like a Presidente:  Appearance and Electability among Mexican Politicians.”

 

Recent research in political psychology, particularly in the United States, has suggested that the way candidates look affects their electoral prospects.  This article investigates whether such findings also apply to elections in Mexico, a country with very different political institutions and traditions.  We find that Mexican politicians who simply look more appealing to student subjects – exposed fleetingly to unlabeled, black-and-white photographs of the candidates – do substantially better in actual elections.  These results have wide-ranging ramifications for the study of media effects and voting behavior, as well as normatively troubling implications for democratic representation.

 

 

Sallie Hughes (School of Communication, University of Miami) and Manuel Alejandro Guerrero (Department of Communication, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico), “The Disenchanted Voter: Emotional Appeals, Class Polarization, and Electoral Participation in Mexico.”

 

This paper uses qualitative research methods to explain how audience readings of polarizing campaign messages created a situation in which a political candidate came to embody mobilizing emotions that for certain voters overcame a dominant macro-level trend away from electoral participation. This was because audience interpretations of campaign messages in Mexico's 2006 presidential election produced very different but equally mobilizing emotional responses depending upon an audience member's class status: fear of change for the wealthy, and hope for change in the poor. However, the micro-level interaction of emotional appeals and class status failed to mobilize enough potential voters to stop the overall decline in electoral participation noticeable in Mexico (and other countries) after the "founding" democratic election. Quantitative survey research suggests this may be because: 1, not all of the electorate is as attentive to mediated campaign messages as those in our study, who came from the most-wealthy sectors and the organized poor; 2, class polarization was most noticeable in vote choices of the more wealthy and the poorest, who were the subjects in our study; this suggests that the middle economic sectors, which were not in our focus group sample, may not react as strongly to emotional appeals given their ambivalent class status. Based on our study, we expect the long-term decline in Mexican electoral participation to continue as long as the underlying cause of voter disenchantment - poor governmental performance - remains.