The Latin American civil society and the communication policies: impact and challenges

SEGURA, MARÍA SOLEDAD

International Journal of Communication (IJOC)

University of Southern California

Año: 2014 p. 1 - 16

1932-8036

Although the dispute about communication policies in Latin America seems to be restricted to the confrontation between governments and major media corporations in each country, civil society organizations has been the leading advocate for legislative reforms to ensure diversity and, in particular, sector participation in the provision of legal audiovisual communication. As a result of their impact, they obtained recognition for the nonprofit sector as a provider of audiovisual media services in the new broadcasting laws of the region. This is the most important innovation of this century in the communication field. This new conditions presents new and important challenges for the sustainability and growth of the social and community media. First, we propose the theoretical perspective from which we analyze. Then, we reconstruct the conditions that made possible that civil society promote reforms in public communication policies in the region in this century. Third, we characterize these social organizations and their proposals for changing. Then, we refer to the impact achievements in the regulations and policies of the area. Finally, we propose the challenges that this new situation implies for them. Moreover, in each case, we return to the theoretical issues that the empirical analysis present.