Participation to avoid elite capture in communication policies. Lessons from Latin America

SEGURA, MARÍA SOLEDAD; LINARES, ALEJANDRO

Lyon

Conferencia; Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research; 2023

nternational Association for Media and Communication Research

Communication policies in Latin America have historically been captured by economic and politicalelites. Thus, the policiy-making process was unequal and its results increased the unequalpossibilities of access, diversity, pluralism and participation in public communication.In the first decades of the XXIst Century there were a relevant statal and social activism oncommunication. Consequently, most of the new regulations enacted in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentinaand Uruguay created participatory state institutions for proposing and monitoring policies.This paper analyzes the ways that the institutionalization of citizen participation in communicationpolicies took place in these four Latin American countries.The main question is: To what extent did the participatory institutions created by the laws ofaudiovisual communication, telecommunications and access to information sanctioned with socialparticipation between 2000 and 2020 in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Uruguay, allow (or not)that social organizations have an impact on the policy-making processes to avoid or limit theircapture by political and economic elites?The theoretical approach follows the tradition of communication policies studies that addressescitizen participation as a key dimension in the democratization of communications (UNESCO, 1977;Mastrini & Mestman, 1995; Freedman, 2006; Loreti & Lozano, 2014; Segura & Waisbord, 2016;Linares, 2017; Segura, 2018; Rich, Maika & Montero, 2019; among others).Methodologically, a comparative study was carried out based on the operationalization of theconcept of citizen participation. Two procedures were complementary: bibliographical anddocumentary analysis; and 18 interviews with state officials and social activists.We argue that the participatory institutions created by communication laws sanctioned with socialparticipation in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Uruguay between 2000 and 2020 failed to ensurecitizen impact on communication policies. Instead, they remained subsumed within partisannegotiation and/or political alliances. However, they did manage to circumstantially limited orsuspended the capture of communication policies by the elites.In addition, the analysis of Latin American experiences of participatory institutions allows theformulation of a theoretical model of citizen participation that overcomes the limitations of themulti-stakeholder paradigm.