Media and Empowerment in Venezuela: Towards a Participatory Public-Media Space

Abstract

Since the election of President Hugo Chávez in 1999, the Venezuelan government has promoted a model of participatory democracy in the area of communication, which includes the people, in terms of not only access to information but also their participation in its construction. From this point of view, this chapter categorizes, analyses and questions the different public media policies implemented by the Venezuelan government since 1999. The chapter first considers the regional media context and compares it to the Venezuelan media context, and then analyses the legal and policy frameworks that were created with the objective of developing a participatory media sphere. The chapter then examines how these policies are implemented in the day-to-day lives of Venezuelans. This is followed by a discussion of how these ideas are extended to other jurisdictions through regional processes. For this purpose, I argue that three empiric transverse axes can be used as a reading key to systematize these different initiatives.