Social participation and public media. The Argentinean case?

MARÍA SOLEDAD SEGURA

Congreso; VIIe Colloque Panam 2015 ?Gouvernance et service publique mediatique?; 2015

In LatinAmerica, public media were barely able to developuntil 2005. In many Central American and Caribbean countries they have not evenexisted. Meanwhile, in countries where they have emerged such as Argentina,they have remained in the hands of the government on call. The abandonment, thelack of financing, the poverty of their content and the regular changes ofdirection contributed to the deterioration of their credibility and theiraudience. They were relegated to a secondary place in the media system (Arroyo, Becerra, García Castillejo & Santamaría,2012). Meanwhile, communication policies making processes have beenhistorically influenced by political and economic elites. Social actors havenot achieved to have impact, even if Latin American civil society is organizedaround a range of demands related to communication rights. In particular, related to public media. Nevertheless, civic organizations had an unusual participation andimpact in many aspects of the communication policies reforms made in many LatinAmerican countries during the last decade. One indicator of this impact is thecreation of participatory institutions of media governance ?and, specificallyof public media governance- in some of the new communication laws of theregion.  In this paper, we will analyze one of these cases: the Argentinean civilsociety demands on public media, their impact on Ley de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual passed in 2009, andthe difficulties of social participation and achievement during the newpolicies implementation.