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Empowering citizenship though journalism, information, and entertainment

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 Conceptualizing Journalism, Information,
Entertainment, and Citizenship: the Applications for Iberoamerica

Manuel Chávez and Manuel Guerrero1

Objectives of the Book

The media, as a social institution, is crucial to sustain a democratic and open
society. Among other things, they are crucial for providing relevant information on
public matters to the citizenry, for watching abuses of power and unveiling corruption,
and for serving themselves as an open forum for public debate. In brief, the media are
important in raising awareness and knowledge about ongoing problems (Atkin and
Wallack 1990). This assumption supposes a constant iteration with relatively informed
audiences who, in turn, consume information and engage in public matters through the
media.
The aim of this book is to understand and evaluate the conditions in which the
media in the relatively new democracies in Iberoamerica are succeeding or failing in
promoting monitoring, civic principles and engagement. The originality of the book is
that it does not only focus on the most traditional informational role of the media for
democracy, but that it also explores the role of entertainment to present and socialize
relevant civic values in these polities. Also, in an unavoidable way, this book deals not
only with the media, but constant references are made to their audiences – the citizens –
as well.
There are, thus, some important questions that this book aims to answer: Are the
traditional information formats failing to engage individuals in these democracies? Can
we foster civic engagement among citizens through the media? How can this be
achieved? Are there examples of inclusion that can be emulated? Should some of the
engaging aspects of entertainment be reconceptualized in a democratic public sphere in
the light of new technological advances or should we keep on defining them as a more
banal form of media consumption? Are entertainment programs helpful for socializing
civic values? If so, then in what ways?

1
M. Chavez is a faculty member at the Michigan State University School of Journalism and Manuel
Alejandro Guerrero is Head of the Graduate Program in Communication at Universidad Iberoamericana.
“Introduction” de Manuel Alejandro Guerrero y Manuel Chávez (eds.), Empowering Citizens Through Journalism,
Information & Entertainment in Iberoamerica, Mexico City: Michigan State University – Universidad
Iberoamericana, 2009.
 2

The Intersection of Citizenship, Media and Democracy

One of the most prevalent features of human communities has been the
definition of the attributes and qualities that serve to differentiate their members from
the rest (Turner 1986:13). In modern societies, citizenship is used as the key concept to
differentiate those who can enjoy full membership with those who don’t. Modern ideas
of citizenship can be traced back to the Enlightenment and to the French and American
Revolutions of the late 18th century.
An orthodox way to approach the debate on citizenship is to depart from the
identification of citizens as members of polities and communities, which during the last
200 years have added more responsibilities and obligations to grant their citizens
security, property, liberties and rights (Heather 1990). In the course of the years, then,
the debate about citizenship has become more complex – multifaceted, in the words of
Paul Close (1995) – since the concept has been associated with diverse concepts that
oscillate from the recognition of a mere legal status to the awarding of economic,
cultural and even, information rights, and to the attachment to a community.
A very basic, yet unavoidable, aspect of citizenship links its development with
the extension of different sorts of rights that are granted to all those members of a
community who may be defined as citizens (Marshall 1950). However, this way to
conceptualize citizenship as a legal-status has been strongly criticized from various
perspectives. For instance, authors from both conservative (Mead 1986) and progressive
(King 1987) perspectives claim that a basic attribute of citizenship, more important than
the mere legal status, is the active exercise of civic responsibilities and participation.
Feminists tend to argue, as well, in favor of balancing rights and responsibilities
(Phillips 1991). In many respects, the debates on citizenship centered then around the
question of how to foster such involvement and participation in public matters or at
least in all those subjects that mattered for different groups of citizens.
However, as Kymlicka and Norman rightly point out, the expectation of a strong
public involvement and participation seems to be markedly at odds with the way most
people in the modern world behave (p. 362). Talking about citizenship is not an easy
task since it involves different components of identity, cooperation, tolerance,
participation, responsibility and rights. The liberal classic view of citizenship is to
depart from equating a citizen to an individual and then allege in favor of treating
everyone just as an individual with the same rights, obligations, liberties, and
responsibilities.
 3

However, real life does not work much like that since people feel identified and
attached to different languages, institutions, traditions, regions and communities, even
within the same frontiers. At the end of the 20th century, Iris Marion Young published a
seminal article in which she underlines the need for recognizing these differences if we
are to generate a meaningful debate on the concept of citizenship, of a “differentiated
citizenship” (1989). In contrast to the classic liberal view, she argues that:
The attempt to realize an ideal of universal citizenship that finds the
public embodying generality as opposed to particularity, commonness
versus difference, will tend to exclude or to put at a disadvantage some
groups, even when they have formally equal citizenship status. The idea
of the public as universal and the concomitant identification of
particularity with privacy make homogeneity a requirement of public
participation. In exercising their citizenship, all citizens should assume
the same impartial, general point of view transcending all particular
interests, perspectives and experiences. But such an impartial general
perspective is a myth. People necessarily and properly consider public
issues in terms influenced by their situated experience and perception of
social relations. Different social groups have different needs, cultures,
histories, experiences and perceptions of social relations that influence
their interpretation of the meaning and consequences of policy proposals
and influence the form of their political reasoning. These differences in
political interpretation are not merely or even primarily a result of
differing or conflicting interests, for groups have differing interpretations
even when they seek to promote justice and not merely their own self-
regarding ends. In a society where some groups are privileged while
others are oppressed, insisting that as citizens, persons should leave
behind their particular affiliations and experiences to adopt a general
point of view serves only to reinforce that privilege; for the perspectives
and interests of the privileged will tend to dominate this unified public,
marginalizing or silencing those of other groups (Young 1989: 257).

Many critics of the “differentiated citizenship” thesis argue that focusing on

what makes people different instead on what people share dooms all hopes for creating
a larger community and ends up by being an arbitrary perspective since there is no clear
 4

manner to determine who should be given differentiated status (Taylor 1991, Kristeva
1993). However, it is still true that today the rights and identities of groups based on
ethnicity, nationalism and other claims are at the forefront of the debate on citizenship.
Theory must help explain reality and not reality accommodate to theory.
Moreover, for the purpose of this book, the most relevant aspects of the debate
on citizenship to be acknowledged relate to the fact that in Iberoamerica people are
precisely in the middle of discovering and/or redefining the dimensions of citizenship.
Taking Young’s perspective, one cannot but realize that in Iberoamerica the dominant
discourse on an ideal universal citizenship is, to say the least, controversial. In some
countries, strong local identities have risen to contest a broader national discourse, as in
Spain. In other countries, the high rates of inequality make one wonder if the dominant
discourses on national unity and citizenship have, at the end, worked to keep the
unbalanced distribution of privileges and benefits, like in many Latin American
countries.
Kymlicka (1995) acknowledges the importance of recognizing the “differences”
in the creation of a new theory of citizenship that enables a framework for diverse
groups to promote their specific cultural traits and identity. He contends that contrary to
the fear that the acceptance of “difference” would endanger liberal democracy, its
recognition is consistent with some modern liberal principles of individual freedom and
justice, and thus would promote incorporation and inclusion without a pretension to
melting. In this regard, and despite the complexity of the debate on citizenship, in this
book we believe there are four basic and minimal elements of liberal inspiration that any
conceptualization of citizenship must have in connection with the media: a) citizenship
encompasses the capacity to question authority (Galston 1991); b) citizenship
encompasses the capacity to engage in public deliberation (Young 2000); citizenship
encompasses the capacity to freely decide the degree of participation in public space
(Merino 1995); and, d) citizenship encompasses the capacity to exchange and obtain
information on public matters (Guerrero 2007). In all these respects, citizenship rests on
information availability, and here is where the media plays a crucial role.

In a classic work, Alexander Meiklejohn sustains that since democracy means

popular sovereignty, citizens require a large amount of information to make better
decisions and make better choices (1960). It is that information that provides citizens
with relevant data on public matters, and that, ideally, fosters critical thinking and civic
 5

engagement. Here, the media plays crucial roles in a liberal democracy since it is
supposed to at least:
 provide citizens with useful information to make their choices and to formulate
their decisions on topics of their concern;
 serve as an open forum in which a large diversity of ideas can be posed and are
subject of public debate;
 serve as watchdogs against government and corporate abuses and corruption.
In this way, the media become a critical ally to sustain a democratic public life in
which citizens, at least, have the possibility to engage and participate (Ungar 1990;
Michnik and Rosen 1997). However, such an ideal image of the media may not be met
by their actual informational practices, structures and discourses. The cases exposed in
this book show precisely that mainstream media’s informational discourse is not
necessarily engaging different groups in our society. Sometimes mainstream media have
to create new forms of fostering participation and still other times, technology and
entertainment are becoming the vehicles to channel new forms of engagement and
participation for different groups.
What becomes clear is that the association of such ideal roles of the media in a
democracy with the traditional informational aspects of the media, as represented by the
newspapers and the news broadcasts, may not completely hold in these days in
Iberoamerica. In this regard, one has to recognize that linking the ideal roles of the
media to sustain democracy and an engaging citizenry to newspapers and news
broadcasts is nowadays in trouble: everywhere newspapers are losing readership and
news broadcasts are losing audience. In fact, people who watch the news broadcasts and
other traditional political content programs are decreasing in number and getting older
(Mindich 2005).
Traditional media sources of information are losing audiences and readers, and this
trend poses interesting questions on the future of democratic participation and civic
engagement, as we have known them. Among these questions, some that deserve close
examination are: What are the best forms to engage citizens in public life? Are there any
formulas that include communities and citizens? How can the media offer a sustainable
public sphere?
One of the generation risks of inaction is to miss their youth. According to surveys
in many European, North American and Latin American countries, less and less youth
seem to be interested in conventional public life and politics, a space that they mostly
 6

regard as suspicious, potentially corrupted, and uninteresting (Deutsches Jugendinstitut

2003; Print 2005; INJUVE 2006). For instance, according to a Pew Research Center
study, American youth:
…have been disengaging from conventional politics. In particular,
electoral participation by America's youngest citizens has experienced a
long, slow decline. In most elections since 18- to 20-year-olds were
given the vote, voter turnout among younger Americans has fallen, and,
indeed, has accounted for most of the drop in voter turnout overall in the
United States during that period… Young people have also shown other
signs of disengagement from political life. In Pew Research Center polls
over the past two decades, the percentage of the youngest age cohort
registering a complete lack of attention to politics rose from 12% (in
1987-1988) to 24% (in 2002-2003). Similarly, while 47% of young
adults ages 18-29 were daily newspaper readers in 1972, by 2004 the
number among the same age group had plummeted to 23%. Moreover,
that earlier cohort has continued to read newspapers at the same rate as
they have grown older (they are now mostly in their 50s). It appears that
newspaper reading is a habit developed early in life. Once developed, it
continues, but if it isn't started, it may never be undertaken (Keeter 2006:
2).
In both old and new democracies participation in the most traditional forms –
like militancy in parties, unions and organizations – are decreasing or not attractive for
younger generations. Even voting turnouts, as recorded from the citation above, have
been lower in the last ten years than they were 20 years ago. However, the paradox is
that at the very same time, it is possible to find more options and alternatives on the
media –in terms of programs and newspapers – from which to obtain information about
public life.
Today a larger number of programs have appeared devoted to discuss different
aspects of the public life than 15 years ago (Mindich 2005). Thus, there are more
options, but apparently also less interest. What is this trend telling us about the way
people are engaging and interacting with the media and with politics? What is the
unattractiveness of public issues debates? Many studies emphasize that the tuning out
from these programs has a lot to do with more general trends of declining participation
and engagement in democracies, both full-fledged and new ones (American Civic
 7

Forum 1994; Putnam 1995; Bahmueller 1997; Mason and Kluegel 2000; UNDP 2004).
In general, this may be true. Nevertheless, it is also interesting to note that most of the
informational options that have emerged in the last decades in the broadcast media
(CNN, Fox News) seem to say very much the same things as the old ones (ABC News,
CBC News). In a time of declining participation and civic engagement, the question is
then if the media has the capacity to re-engage the citizenry with public issues
deliberation and participation. If so, how can it do it?

Institutions and Variants of Democratic Participation and Civic Engagement

At the core of most academic discussions on democracy is the level of citizen
participation in civic activities after elections are concluded. Voting periodically in
local, regional and national elections to elect public officials and major public policies is
seen as one of the most visible ways of exercising citizens’ democratic rights. It is clear
that citizenship is not limited to electoral periods but to an active engagement in the
political system. The emphasis on participating in community and civic affairs beyond
ballot casting is a fundamental preoccupation in the work of classic social scientists
(Mills 1956, 1959; Dahl 1971, 1989, 1998; Lipset 1963).
As stated in the previous section, citizenship encompasses the capacity to
participate. However, participating in the political system is not an easy proposition.
Multiple factors are touted to cause a low, minimal participation or total disengagement.
Some factors include: quality and quantity of information, levels of satisfaction with the
political, social and economic environment, and even personal dissatisfaction with
election results. Also, at the center of most participation analysis is the concept of
inclusion and space (Anderson and Guillory 1997).
The different levels of citizen participation also are compounded by the
variations in the democratic types, especially when it is defined as a political model.
Some, as O’Donnell (1992), talked about delegative democracy, where after elections,
the electorate delegate all responsibilities in political institutions (congress and
parliaments) and on individuals to head those institutions (presidents and other elected
officials). Presidents, governors, mayors and political parties taking over leadership
positions may be elected in fair and free elections and they may as well assume the
responsibilities of serving not only the ones who voted for them but for all citizens –all
members of the electorate. In this model, additional participation is not considered.
 8

Another commonly accepted type of democracy is the representative model,

where after elections a group of individuals elected by the majority is expected to
represent the interests of all. However, most political scientists talk about representative
democracy in capitalist societies without giving sufficient room to participation.
Representation through elected individuals serving in political institutions as
congresses, senates and parliaments, seem to satisfy the democratic process for this
model. In fact, most studies of representative democracy explore satisfaction and
dissatisfaction levels after elections and during the exercise of government of the
elected party or individual; but not citizen participation levels after elections (Lipjhart
1999).
However, other types of democracy have recently encouraged the active
participation and engagement of citizens in their political system. Participatory
democracy is one of them focusing primarily on public policymaking. The main
argument of this model is that regardless of who is elected to office, citizens need to
participate in the policy making process, where most of the real impacts on
communities and citizens take place. For the proponents of participatory democracy, the
active participation of citizens is another form of inclusion in which democracy is
enriched. This model also assumes the empowerment of communities and citizens, and
the sharing of responsibility for governance (Bachrach and Botwinick 1992). This
model has been popular in environmental issues, city planning and urban space
regulations that traditionally encourage collective participation.
Deliberative democracy is another recent perspective that proposes the
participation of citizens to deliberate, analyze and promote action on issues affecting
them. This perspective is careful not to encourage “debate” but deliberation as a format
to come to consensus and to specific actions supported by the majority. This model
assumes that a group of citizens get together to engage in a civic process that has
positive impacts on democracy, their communities and the entire political system.
Deliberative democracy is a variation of the Habermas’ public sphere model and places
an emphasis on the deliberation of the public interest (Bohman and Rehg 1997; Young
2000; Cohen 1997). This perspective is touted to promote a wide participation of
community members to elaborate, define, conceptualize and ultimately, deliberate about
the issues affecting them. Also, it poses an emphasis on reaching consensus or majority
support for decisions made and on the actions to be taken to move those decisions
forward.
 9

These theoretical alternatives to traditional models of civic participation are

relatively new in the improvement and strengthening of democracy. While all models
are inclusive and appeal to most citizens, the last two pose some basic prerequisites.
These requirements need to be constantly present in any conceptualization of citizenship
and should be provided and protected by government action: the capacity to question
government, the space to engage in public deliberation, and the right and ability to
obtain information on public matters.
In participatory and deliberative democracies, the notion of “being informed” is
not only preferred but is fundamentally required. Expectations for active engagement
are diminished when citizens have incomplete, biased, delayed or incorrect information.
Or simply when some groups in society are unable to get information. Thus, the most
critical element of civic participation is information, which if adequate, can play a
positive role in protecting and maintaining an open and pluralistic polity. As stated
before, here is where, ideally, the news media plays a critical role to keep citizens
informed on public life, government actions and inactions, collective wellbeing, and
options to improve their lives and their communities.
In analyzing the recent disengagement of citizens in public life, especially in
developing democracies, the role and function of institutions become critical, including
traditional media types. Trust is generally low in public institutions including the
judiciary, legislatures, government branches, political parties and others having a more
private character as unions, the church, press and educational system. Part of the
problem is related to the failure of institutions to initiate and maintain transparent and
accountable processes. The other problem relates to the facilitation and protection of
access for the community and citizens. The crisis of trust and confidence in most public
institutions is not only a problem in Iberoamerica, but it is extended to develop societies
as well (Newton and Norris 2000). Specifically, in most Latin American countries for
the last ten years, there is a pervasive problem about institutions and their degree of
connection with citizens (Chavez 2006).
The relationship between institutions and an empowered citizenry could not
have been any clearer. When institutions are accountable, indirectly, they help to reduce
inequalities. But when they are closed they can exacerbate society asymmetries
(Przeworski et al. 1999). And while many agree that intrinsically institutions don’t
exclude, the size and organizational structure of institutions unintentionally create
patterns of exclusion and exclusivity. This in turn has created a pervasive pattern of lack
 10

of accountability that affects collective trust and participation. Consequently, a virtuous

circle linking the community, citizens and institutions emerge requiring for its existence
and longevity the constant action and involvement of all.
As in any institution, accountability and transparency are key to ensure it
accomplishes its functions. However, accountability is not yet in the political culture of
Latin American institutions, especially on media accountability. Accountability and
transparency are features in political and democratic institutions to respond functionally
to citizens and to communities – even from different parties – as part of their normative
mandate. The proper response of institutions, just by doing their work, strengthens trust,
civic participation, and the quality of the political life (Mainwaring 2003).
The accountable role of the media in promoting civic participation, citizenship
and democracy, is essential. The media as an institution embedded into the political
system ought to offer two major entries; one that provides fair, balanced, timely and
unbiased information, and the other that makes their organizations open and transparent
to citizens and communities. The media, especially the news media, has an important
weight on the formation of public opinion and on the public debate, and, if these two
premises are ignored collective trust and credibility suffers.
If there is no accountability on the media and general disenchantment emerges,
the obligated questions are: What happens when informational outlets are unable to
present truthful, objective and impartial information? What happens when their editorial
agendas are not reporting on certain subjects or when they simply do not mirror the
diversity of interests and groups within society? The answer is that when the virtuous
circle is broken the entire community bears the consequences. The chapters included in
this book contribute to show precisely how the news outlets, the new media, and new
formats incipiently adopted by some traditional media – including entertainment – are,
explicitly or unintended, opening new spaces for participation, engagement and
deliberation.

Information, Entertainment & Technology

Some of the most visible aspects of the relation between the media, politics and
civic culture are commonly associated to news electronic broadcasts, newspapers and
other political content programs. Yet, such topics are not easily linked to “less serious”
kind of programs and formats. Politics and civic culture seem afar from entertainment.
In many studies, any linkage between politics and entertainment is regarded as
 11

degrading and banal forms of representing public life. In brief, discussion on public
matters and entertainment should be kept apart from each other. Perhaps the most
influential work in this regard is Neil Postman’s (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death, in
which he argues that television formats and rhythm avoid an in-depth discussion of
serious issues and instead it transforms these debates into mere entertainment.
After Postman’s book, many other authors have taken his ideas as a basis to
arrive at quite pessimistic conclusions about the relation between politics and media,
especially, but not exclusively, broadcasting media. Some of the statements argue that
the media cannot provide adequate knowledge to individuals, alienate citizens from the
public debates, diminish people’s interest in politics, cannot inform citizens adequately,
or prevent individuals from being aware of truly important issues (Cappella 2002;
Cappella and Jamieson 1997; De Vreese and Semetko 2002; Gitlin 2003; Hart 1994;
Robinson 1976 and 1977; Scheuer 2000). Though this pessimistic image of the media
has been contested by other works (Pinkleton and Austin 2001; Norris 2000) or, at least,
put into question as an independent variable for political malaise (Guerrero and Hughes
2007). What is evident is that traditional programs and editorial formats that keep the
straight division between those informing (the media) and those being informed (the
individuals) are losing readership and audiences in favor of other media formats that are
considered by their audiences/consumers/readers as more entertaining (Dörner 2001)
and interactive. That is what we have today. In the near future it is not probable that the
citizens will substantially modify their media diet or that the media will disappear as the
main mediator between them and the large majority of information on public matters.
The audiences of programs like Big Brother, the different national versions of
American Idol, and of blogs on these and on sports programs, are by far surpassing in
number the most enthusiastic expectancies any news broadcasts or newspaper could
have when presenting information on public issues. While newspapers and news
broadcasts are losing audiences and readers, programs like Big Brother and American
and Latin American Idol have been able to captivate audiences “into discussion,
participation, creativity, intervention, judging and voting [which are] activities that
would qualify as civic competences if they would be performed in the domain of
politics” (Van Zoonen 2003: 5). Two alternatives seem to surface. Either we take some
elements of these programs as lessons to be learned and used as experiences for change
or we keep on discarding all “heterodox” and nontraditional information formats
 12

because they seem shallow and banal. As communication scholars, the preference is on
the close study of different formats and interactivity.
When discussing the relation between the media, politics and citizenship, the
area of entertainment becomes an uncomfortable issue since it does not easily fit into
any of the ideal above-mentioned roles that the media should play in a democratic
polity. This is a reason why in many studies on media and politics entertainment is
either left aside, or considered a perverse deviation from the media’s true role as a space
for rational discourse (Zillmann and Vorderer 2000).
However, entertainment conveys strong forms of social representation and
socially accepted values, attitudes, beliefs, prejudice and behavior. In fact, some studies
refer to the relevance of entertainment as a facilitator for social change (Singhal and
Rogers 1999). In this regard, entertainment – which has been downgraded in the studies
that discuss politics and democracy – has a quite relevant role in the conformation of the
collective imaginary and in the ways different versions of the social and the cultural life
of a community are represented.
Entertainment may be an invaluable source to obtain data on how different
social issues and attitudes are perceived, on how dominant and minority groups are
represented, on how discourses on innovation, change, traditions and fears are depicted,
and all these strongly mirror important features of the social, cultural and political life
(Desmond 1994; Potter 2001; Silverblatt 2001). Moreover, more “conventional”
formats of political contents, both on the electronic media and on newspapers are being
complemented, if not replaced, by other formats that connect between information and
entertainment, creating such controversial debates on “infotainment” (Anderson 2004;
Fenton 2005; Wittwen 1995) and “Politainment” (Leggerwie 2000; Dörner 2001). For
some, the adoption of these formats has made these programs and contents more casual
and more stimulating for viewers and readers (Schicha 2003).
However, the question about the sacrifice of content for pure formats remains,
and it must not be underestimated. Adopting only the formats cannot transform a
dumbed-down show into an intelligent program proposal when there is nothing relevant
about the content. And that should be clear. Moreover, not all the adoptions of
innovative entertainment formats on political-content programs have been successful.
Some experiments to adopt reality shows formats on political programs both in
Argentina – El Candidato del Pueblo – and the United States – The American
Candidate on FX – proved to fail dramatically (Van Zoonen 2005). Sticking exclusively
 13

to entertainment formats may not necessarily be the successful formula producers and
editors are looking for, or the more enlightening forms for public matters debates.
In this regard, key findings are presented in a study of the Hansard Society
conducted by Oxford professor Stephen Coleman (2003) about the possible lessons that
Big Brother could teach those interested in politics in Britain. Coleman argues that:
Parliamentary democracy is not intrinsically tedious; reality TV is not
inherently exciting. But both are mediated to the public in significantly
different ways. A large part of the success of Big Brother is its capacity
to involve the viewer in an interactive process. The viewer becomes a
player in the game, forming judgments about and determining the fate of
the contestants. Interactivity is political. It shifts control toward the
receivers of messages and makes all representations of reality vulnerable
to public challenge and disbelief (Coleman 2003: 19).
What Coleman is arguing is that for politics to become more engaging, and in
many ways closer to people, it requires that politics broaden its accountability through
allowing the citizens more control via a larger interaction between them and politicians.
And the mediators here play a crucial role. But what does “interactivity” mean here?
Coleman takes the definition of interactivity given by Liu and Shrum (2002) as “the
degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the
communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences
are synchronized” (in Coleman 2003: 36). Interactivity allows participants to act on
each other and opens up the possibility to enrich the content that is being exchanged.
It is true that entertainment may have to do a lot with banality and that to attract
larger audiences or readership the media has employed some of the most sensationalistic
frameworks to present their contents. However, there are two aspects of entertainment
that cannot be left aside: entertainment has had interesting results when used as a
strategy to design messages intended to generate social change.
As described by Singhal, there are two effects. “First, it can influence members’
awareness, attitude and behavior toward a socially desirable end. Here, the anticipated
effects are located in the individual audience member. An illustration is provided by the
radio soap opera, Twende na Wakatti (Let’s Go With the Times), in Tanzania that
convinced several hundred thousand sexually-active adults to adopt HIV prevention
behavior. Second, it can influence the external environment of the audience to help
create the necessary conditions for social change at the system level. Here the major
 14

effects are located in the interpersonal and social-political sphere of the audience’s
external environment” (Singhal, et al. 2004: 5-6). The other is that some entertainment
programs have been able to engage their viewers and make them feel inclined to watch,
read and listen, and when complemented with interactive formats, they also have been
able to move their audiences to participate.
The success of these programs is their capability to engage the audiences and
involve them enough to care about the content developments, and make the audiences
feel that “their active participation may affect the outcome” (Coleman 2003: 4). The
levels of engagement and participation of the audiences, for instance, in realities
represents nowadays the opposite trend of what we are witnessing on the political arena,
where individuals are tuning out of politics and diminishing their sense of efficacy. But
any explanation that could be given cannot be simplistically reduced to a discussion on
formats. Instead, a broader picture of media – and multimedia –consumption may be
helpful for understanding these trends better.
Today new communication technologies are deeply changing the landscape of
social interrelations. Mobile phones and electronic mailing are not only getting more
people in touch with each other on a scale never seen before, but also at an unparalleled
speed. This seems to be the key. We send, receive and download communication
contents almost instantaneously either through the computer or the mobiles. We have
become used to instant responses and at times gratifications from a growing supply of
choices of goods and services (Miller and Rose 1997), even in countries with high
disparity of income, like those in Latin America.
However, our political life seems to a great extent disconnected from these
rhythms of 21st century life. It seems that all the interaction and exchanges that
characterize other spheres of life are absent from politics: the level of political
responsiveness is low; participation is, for the majority, limited to voting; political
alternatives are disappearing, since parties tend to converge in a never specified
“political center;” and for the citizens, their feeling of efficacy is diminishing, since
expressing their opinions on particular issues to their representatives is a less practiced
art. In the words of Peter Bazalgette, the chairman of Endemol, UK:
E-mail and mobile telephony have transformed the tenor of our lives.
We answer more emails in a day than we used to receive letters in a
week. We send and accept SMS text messages as quickly. We expect
and enjoy responsiveness to a level of almost instant gratification. But
 15

we still only vote for the government once every four years or so.
Privately political parties are in tune with this spirit. They poll us weekly
for our views. But publicly the system gives us no power, nor any
official route to express our opinions. Speed, on its own, is not
necessarily a virtue. But our democracy is divorced from the rhythm of
the age (Coleman 2003: 3).
In brief, borrowing a term from Hegel, while today’s Zeitgeist is characterized
by interactivity and growing interconnections that may lead to individuals’ engagement,
politics seems to be far, slow and unresponsive. Nevertheless, this is not a plea for an
unreflective adoption of entertainment formats in politics –nothing could be further
from our aims. What we require is a better understanding of the possibilities offered by
entertainment and interactive formats that with a reasonable skepticism might be useful
to explore different forms for engaging citizens into public issues discourses. Moreover,
we even require a new and broader definition of entertainment in order to conceptualize
it in more positive terms in relation to its possible contributions to public life.

Why to Study Iberoamerica? The Authors Perspective

An obliged question in this book is “Why Iberoamerica?” In English-speaking
countries the very word “Iberoamerica” sounds quite unfamiliar and, actually, there is
no natural term to define the world comprised by the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking
worlds. The most common used and larger term is that of “Latin America” – a term
crafted by the French in the 19th century – or the “Americas” if it encompasses all the
countries of the continent.
Instead, for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, the term Iberoamerica
has the meaning of encompassing the countries of Latin America plus Spain and
Portugal, or the Iberian Peninsula in Western Europe. Iberoamerica is, thus, a term that
underlines a common cultural heritage among the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking
countries on both sides of the Atlantic. Such heritage cannot, by any means, be
considered in narrow and homogeneous ways, though it can still be recognized broadly
in terms of the language, dominant religion, customs and traditions. In strict political
terms, though today’s state of democracy greatly differ from Spain to Venezuela, the
Iberoamerican countries share also the experiences of transiting from authoritarian and
limited-pluralistic regimes. Actually Portugal and Spain inaugurated the so-called
 16

“Third Wave of Democracy” (Huntington 1991). In general, the experience of actual

democracy, of modern citizenship, and of open and free media is relatively recent in all
cases.
Moreover, in spite of their actual differences and for varied reason, the
Iberoamerican countries are witnessing an emerging debate on citizenship. Some of
these debates are the product of a restructuring of the state’s capacities to grant rights
and freedoms, but in other cases, it is also the outcome of a general malaise with the
democratic performance (Latinobarometer 2003) and with the capacity of individuals to
actually have a meaningful interaction, engagement and participation in the public life
of their countries. As with full-fledged democracies, the disenchantment with politics
resonates through the media (Guerrero and Hughes 2007), however the question here is
if these media can eventually be able to create the conditions for re-engaging the
citizens and to open new forms of interactivity between them and the political world.
Can the media be able to profit from new technologies and innovative formats to play a
better role for strengthening democracy and civic culture?
The essays collected here discuss, from a wide variety of points of view and
from various geographical places, the ways media facilitates or hinders citizens and
communities engagement in democracy. The authors also show and discuss examples of
how the media fosters civic values by using both conventional and innovative formats to
present the social and political issues in Iberoamerican countries.
Juan Menor Sendra and Ricardo Pérez-Amat García in their chapter “Audiences,
Citizens and Politics as a Religion: the Spanish Television” examine the early
connections between the media and citizenship. They initially provide a comprehensive
overview of the importance and roles of journalism in the political system and the
variations affecting the format used. Then they examine in detail how politics is covered
by TV journalistic styles, ranging from the structure of news programs in public and
private television to the new formats of talk-shows. Menor and Pérez-Amat further
discuss the traits of infotainment and its relationship with reporting current affairs. In
doing this, they discuss a variety of programs broadcast by several Spanish channels,
including ANTENA 3, TVE, RTVE, and TELE 5 among others, and analyze the
differences in format used by public and private television. They conclude by discussing
the culture of consumption and the culture of debating in Spanish television, arguing
that while both have important benefits to inform citizens, the content at times dilutes
and causes negative civic engagement.
 17

Antonio García Jiménez addresses issues related to sports and the media in
Spain and Latin America in his chapter “Sports and Citizenship: Identities through New
Media.” García Jiménez examines sports and how they relate to citizenship by
providing an overview of the different perspectives used by countries – and regions
within countries on their appreciation to local and national sports. He also presents
some debate on how the media has been able to capitalize on the dependency that sports
have with communities and countries. He explores the context and content of sports
programs as entertainment and how these influence viewers and readers. Garcia Jimenez
sees a process in which sports is a culture and also a business placing tension on
personal and collective identity. He cites examples in Spain and Portugal sports as well
as their impacts derived from their global broadcasting across the continent and
specially in Latin American countries to illustrate the influence. In his analysis, he pays
close attention to the new media including websites and blogs and how these in
combinations with portable media are influencing the consumption of sports
programming. He concludes, as other authors, that media has some influence on citizens
regardless of the format, and he says that impacts on the individual and on their
communities are still unclear requiring further study.
Álvaro Pérez-Ugena y Coromina provides a comprehensive overview on the
soap operas or telenovelas in his chapter “Telenovelas: Influencial Media, An
Information Resource Or A Socialization Tool?” He provides a historical synopsis of
telenovelas and their transition from entertainment to socialization instruments used
globally by private and public broadcasting companies. He describes the format used in
the telenovelas including; family issues and dynamics, social inequality, historical
revisions, visual and language uses. Pérez-Ugena provides an examination of how
telenovelas in Mexico, Argentina and Colombia use information in their content and
how this compares with early examples of soap operas in Europe. The impact of
telenovelas, he concludes, is wide and multifaceted to individuals who as citizens need
to disentangle the content of the information provided and to wrestle with the
socialization content included in the programs.
Fernando García Masip explores Brazilian democracy and citizen journalism in
his chapter “Citizen Journalism, Cyber-activism and Contemporary Brazilian
Democracy: A Deconstructive Approach.” The chapter seeks to examine the ways in
which the professional journalism in the Brazilian society in the ‘80s of last century, has
systematically included ambiguously the amateur/ layman journalism in its pages and
 18

also shows how the amateur journalism, tout court, has created its own spaces
particularly in the realm of cyberculture. This world wide phenomenon has a growing
important activism in Brazil and contributes with the dissolution of the canonic borders
between transmitters/receptors, producer/audience, professional/amateur, press/citizen,
etc. Garcia Masip evaluates up to which point this type of factual deconstruction is real.
Manuel Chavez in “Making Journalism and Citizenship Work: A Model of Civic
and Community Participation in News Production” describes and examines the
connection of journalism and citizenship in Mexico. He argues that citizens in
developing democracies have few open doors to express their voices, concerns and
interests; thus limiting civic and community participation. In his chapter, Chavez
discusses the utility of incorporating community members to the editorial decision
making in the press. He shows data and analysis of community infused editorial
councils in four newspapers that are part of the Mexican Grupo Reforma. Chavez shows
that participants, while at first were unclear about their contributions to the newspapers,
later identified their input as a significant component of the improvement of
community, public opinion and democracy. While Reforma primarily sought to improve
the quality of its newspapers by incorporating the community in the editorial decision-
making, the news organization has been able to contribute to the formation of a public
sphere in Mexico. The model, as Chavez concludes, has generated novel impacts on
democracy and civic engagement and has created a unique model of media
accountability.
Manuel Guerrero and Victoria Isabela Corduneanu in “Trust, Credibility and
Relevance in the Consumption of Information among Mexican Youth. Third Generation
TV Audiences” explore two areas of information consumption. On the one hand, they
explore the failure of traditional informational program formats and contents to attract
Mexican educated young audiences. The discourse, images and topics presented are
simply afar from youth’s interests and expectations. On the other hand, these youngsters
seem to conform a third generation of TV (a media) audiences who are able to make
quite elaborated forms of media consumption in which they are able to deconstruct and
relate to media contents in various complex forms. The authors pose a reflection on new
formats and contents to approach, and eventually re-engage young media-native
audiences.
Manuel Gameros in “Politics as Entertainment in Mexico” reviews the recent
examples of media framing during presidential political campaigns. He argues that
 19

beyond the schematic rationalization of politics, politics needs to be intertwined with

the everyday – rational or not – activities of citizens. Otherwise it becomes an alien
sphere, occupied by strangers where no one cares and bothers about. Gameros states
that the political process calls for more than mechanical contrived formulas, such as
new entertainment genres addressing contemporary political issues – as the slapstick
comedy El privilegio de mandar, during the 2006 presidential elections in Mexico.
These cases need to be appraised not merely as denigrating formulas but as potentially
practical mechanisms for the promotion of political awareness. In doing this, Gameros
propose to evaluate how citizens integrate the increasingly fragmented and variable
forms of political communication, available in their everyday lives so we can refine our
understanding of entertainment media as a plausible form of political communication.
Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Arechavaleta in “Political Information, TV News
Reality Frames, and Electoral Behavior in Mexico 2006” summarizes the classic
concerns about the fundamentals of electoral behavior related to factors that shape the
expectations and preferences in an election environment of high uncertainty and
competitive election. He discusses a variety of theoretical perspectives that help in the
understanding of political information and media roles in developed and developing
democracies. He underlines the notion that by increasing the flow of information,
citizens have an opportunity to improve their decisions. He formulates two critical
questions, what factors determine the political persuasion and public opinion of a
changing electorate? and, how do these relate to the final decision of the voter? The
amount and format of political information presented and its possible effects constitutes
the central objective of this essay.
And finally, Sallie Hughes in her chapter “The Evolution of Network News in
Mexico. Capturing the Communications Regulatory Regime” uses the sociology of
journalism to suggests that the result of the interaction of at least three social domains –
the social-psychology of the journalist, the newsroom organizational culture, and the
macro environment of the political economy in which media operates account for the
quality of news produced. She argues that two variables – control of newsroom culture
and market dominance– go a long way toward explaining how Mexico’s largest
television network, Televisa, has grown. Hughes argues that the transition from a
politically discredited and financially disabled company in the late 1990s to a position
of sufficient financial and political strength that is able to capture the power of the state
to democratically regulate broadcasting and telecommunications, demonstrate the
 20

company expanding and extensive power. She explains that the power behind Televisa
allows the company to control more domestic market share than any other network in a
large Latin America country with significant implications on the quality of news. She
concludes by saying that this expansion hinders civic engagement, citizenship, and
democratization.
We think the strengthening of democracy, citizenship and civic participation in
Iberoamerica deserves close attention to issues that now we can pose as questions, such
as: How to induce more media accountability? How should Iberoamerica standardize a
model of civic engagement? How to improve the “informed citizen” model? What can
entertainment do and how should entertainment help in informing, educating and
empowering citizens? What are the roles of both the private and public media
companies? Are legal and regulatory frameworks needed in the process? Are the new
models of access to information and transparency contributing to empowering society as
expected? What are the results derived from new models of access to information?
We believe this book provides a significant contribution to the Iberoamerican
media scholarship on democracy and citizenship. The close examination of journalism
practices, information models, entertainment formulas and their interactions and
impacts on democratic building and civic engagement will need more scholarly work.
The need to create an inventory of positive examples is welcome and very much
required. We are sure colleagues from other countries in Iberoamerica will be able to
contribute, and continue, this academic dialogue in improving regional democracy.
 21

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