The Intellectual Impasse of Cultural Studies of the Media in Latin America: How to Move Forward (original) (raw)

Locating Media in Cultural Theories

Global journal of human social science, 2022

This paper examines means of facilitating research on media as a critical component of contemporary culture based on assessments of recent publications on media. The primary target is in the fundamentally heuristic value of social theories relative to the topic. Based on semiotics, practice, and, to a much lesser degree, speech act theory, analysts generate constructs wherein media often deviate from the conceptual horizons in respective schemes. Reading Derrida's views on speech act theory suggests that an endeavor to resolve the mismatch demands the decomposition of core concepts of a theory. Just as Anderson's formulation casts a delicate light on the use of semiotics in media research, media prefigured through the lenses of the performative forces us to rethink its presence in everyday occurrence as a problematic unthought. The paper concludes that the application of speech act theory to media is a plausible solution to the problems so far encountered if accompanied by historical perspectives on the formation of illocutionary acts.

United and fragmented: Communication and media studies in Latin America

Scholars have lamented the state of fragmentation in communication scholarship for it undermines its consolidation as a distinct and coherent field of study. My interest in this article is to assess whether this diagnosis applies to communication and media studies in Latin America. My argument is that the field remains united yet fragmented in the region. Unlike communication scholarship in the United States and some European countries, it is grounded in common theoretical and analytical roots laid down in the 1960s and 1970s. Foundational studies produced made original and important contributions to the field at large, most notably, the study of media/cultural imperialism, innovations in communication/media policies, and the intersection between media and cultural dynamics. Since then, the field has become consolidated and expanded with the proliferation of research and universities and the development of various lines of research. The result is the empirical fragmentation of the field in multiple, parallel lines of research. Although fragmentation has produced rich empirical studies on myriad issues, it has yet to produce path-breaking, ambitious arguments that once were distinctive of the "Latin American" tradition of communication and media scholarship. What is needed, I argue, is to adopt an analytical position that places theoretical questions at the center, engages with arguments produced in different settings, and participates in broad debates in the global community of communication and media scholars.

From Media Systems to Media Cultures

2018

The comparative study of media systems and their relationships with political systems has received a substantial amount of attention in recent years, and made significant strides in understanding the diversity of mass communication around the world, along with its causes. Yet, while this systemic approach is important, it offers it offers only a partial insight into diversity of global media landscapes and, more generally, into the social implications of mass communication. To gain a fuller grasp of these implications, we need to start from the premise that socially significant communication extends well beyond the traditional domains of politics, and encompasses the mediation of basic cultural ideals and narratives, as well as the structuring of everyday practices and routines. These include the perceptions of private and public life, the understanding of the nation and its position in the world, the modes of organizing daily routines and everyday spaces, the historical events remembered and celebrated on a mass scale, and much more. To investigate these dimensions, this paper develops a conceptual and analytical framework that conceives of media cultures as patterns of ideas and practices that enable mass mediated meaning formation, and that have distinct spatial and temporal characteristics. These media cultures can vary on a number of dimensions, from the extent to which they seek to serve public or private goals, the degree to which they are open to transnational exchanges, to their modes of engaging with the past, present and future. This framework can be applied to different media and cultural forms, and in diverse political and cultural contexts. By way of illustration, the paper outlines how the framework can be used for the comparative study of (analogue) television cultures.

The cultural imperialism paradigm: Implications for media and identity

2015

Ce document propose un examen en profondeur de la perspective de l'impérialisme culturel. Il expose sa thèse principale et les hypothèses théoriques et discute leurs implications sous-jacentes pour les valeurs et l'identité culturelles. Il aborde également la question de l'afflux de médias étrangers, ses multiples manifestations et ses répercussions. La dernière partie de l'article examine les limitations les plus saillantes de ce paradigme.