Politics, Media Systems and Governance: The Battle over Public Opinion in Latin America

A vast deal of effort has been done in comparative analysis in the field of political communication. However, following Pfetsch and Esser (2014), it is clear that this area of study is still under construction and several questions remain open. At the same time, an important part of the research in this area has been done in industrialized countries. A enormous region of more than half a billion people as Latin America represents a challenge to undergo appropriate inquiry in order to understand the close relationship between politics and communication and its effect on governance and public opinion.

In this context, we are interested in seeing how the media relate to politics in Latin America. Moreover, we want to study how this relationship interferes with democratic governance. So far in this century, we have witnessed a struggle between politicians and the media for building the public agenda and thus attract the attention of the public. This debate between politics and media revolves around issues reflecting the interests of both sectors.

In countries like Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela governments confront the media in several cases aggressively. The majority of governments in the region have enacted laws or rules that regulate the function of the media. Behind such laws or regulations, we could find the political will to limit the actions of the media in the field of politics. The media is seeing like lobbying, either their own interests or those of a sector of the population in particular.

People disaffection from the political parties that we found in numerous countries, could explain how the media have come to fill a space of mediation between the population and decision-making centers. This leads...

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... politicians and the media we share certain interests , we will be in a cooperation scheme . If there is no competition for a given topic and does not seek the imposition of an interest, we will be in a position of neutrality in which the topic is not even mentioned by any of the two entities. If interests are opposed , then most likely we are facing the adversarial model that will put the politicians and the media to compete for the favor pupular . This favor measured in terms of perceptions in favor or against the message issued by both actors .

It should be expected that the political culture moderate the impact of the message to the public. Therefore, both the politicians and the media design their communication strategies within the values and principles of society. To the extent that actors can synchronize the message with the expectations of the population.