City Research Online

Abstract

Theoretical scholarship on media democratisation neglects the role of representing groups in civil society, which in new democracies emerging from authoritarian regimes are frequently marginalised. These groups may also contest the form of democracy that has been implemented, and the way in which it deals with key transitional issues such as past human rights violations. This study focuses on how such groups are represented in one post-authoritarian society: Uruguay, which returned to democracy in 1985. Through examining media access for civil society groups in the newspaper coverage of two critical plebiscites on transitional justice issues (1989 and 2009), combined with interviews with journalists and civil society representatives, it argues that there are significant barriers to media access for civil society actors in the return to democracy, which relate both to changes during the democratisation process and domestic journalistic norms. This signals the need for both greater attention to the normative media role of representation during processes of democratisation and a more critical approach to media democratisation theory.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	Media access; Uruguay; media democratisation; South America; transitional justice; media democracy
Subjects:	F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1201 Latin America (General) H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science J Political Science > JL Political institutions (America except United States) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity School of Communication & Creativity > Department of Journalism
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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