“A Significant Impact on our Democracy”: Chilean Media Audiences’ Claims for Dignity

Authors

  • Mónica Humeres-Riquelme Communication and Literature Faculty, Universidad Diego Portales.
  • Claudia Jordana-Contreras Social Sciences Department, Universidad Católica del Maule.
  • Jorge Saavedra-Utman Communication and Literature Faculty, Universidad Diego Portales.

Keywords:

audience, television, Chile, dignity, mobilization

Abstract

Chile’s largest social uprising in 30 years began in October 2019. Protests erupted throughout the country, inspired by a widespread belief that the state and powerful institutional actors, such as the media, had undermined the dignity of much of the population. In this article, we explore how and the extent to which mainstream media, specifically television, has affected the dignity of the Chilean people and how participants in the social uprising defined the concept. Drawing on the hundreds of complaints filed with the National Television Council (CNTV) and using grounded theory, we argue that allegations against harm to people’s dignity caused by the media have become more prevalent in Chile. The reasons given by audience members include the violence of the broadcasts themselves, the stigmatization of certain people and groups, and a lack of journalistic ethics. Ultimately, this article analyzes a key concept for social uprisings and connects it to the ethical and political role of media systems and newsmaking in contemporary democracies.

Author Biographies

Mónica Humeres-Riquelme, Communication and Literature Faculty, Universidad Diego Portales.

Mónica Humeres is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad Diego Portales Faculty of Communication and Literature, where she teaches Methods and Knowledge and Qualitative Research Techniques, and Communication Analysis. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Universidad Alberto Hurtado and was a visiting scholar at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research interests include Communication and Gender, Public Policy and Citizenship, and Social Studies of Science and Technology. In 2020, Mónica was named an International Scholar by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).

Claudia Jordana-Contreras, Social Sciences Department, Universidad Católica del Maule.

Claudia Jordana is Assistant Professor at the Universidad Católica del Maule Department of Social Sciences, where she teaches Quantitative Research Techniques, Sociological Theory and Social Structure and Stratification Models. She received her PhD in sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Her research interests include topics such as inequality and stratification from the perspective of social representation, paying special attention to processes that involve finding symbolic borders between social groups or categories.

Jorge Saavedra-Utman, Communication and Literature Faculty, Universidad Diego Portales.

Dr. Jorge Saavedra Utman is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Literature at the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Chile, where he teaches media theory and qualitative methods. He is also a member of the Center for Research in Communication, Literature, and Social Observation (CICLOS) at UDP. He holds a Ph.D. in Media and Communications (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK), and his research interests are communication and social movements, cultures of participation, and Latin American cultural politics. His latest book is "Comunicación, comunes y movimientos sociales. Mediaciones de Base contra la Política Neoliberal" (FES Comunicación, 2021).

Downloads

Published

2023-12-26

Issue

Vol. 18 (2024)

Section

Articles

License

The International Journal of Communication is an academic journal. As such, it is dedicated to the open exchange of information. For this reason, IJoC is freely available to individuals and institutions. Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be distributed for research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. However, commercial use of the IJoC website or the articles contained herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the editor. Authors who publish in The International Journal of Communication will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grants users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) This journal utilizes the LOCKSSsystem to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. The publisher perpetually authorizes participants in the LOCKSS system to archive and restore our publication through the LOCKSS System for the benefit of all LOCKSS System participants. Specifically participating libraries may:
  • Collect and preserve currently accessible materials;
  • Use material consistent with original license terms;
  • Provide copies to other LOCKSS appliances for purposes of audit and repair.
 

Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 specifies, in Section 107, the terms of the Fair Use exception: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; &
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. In accord with these provisions, the International Journal of Communication believes in the vigorous assertion and defense of Fair Use by scholars engaged in academic research, teaching and non-commercial publishing. Thus, we view the inclusion of “quotations” from existing print, visual, audio and audio-visual texts to be appropriate examples of Fair Use, as are reproductions of visual images for the purpose of scholarly analysis. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, but do not require such permissions as long as the usage of such materials falls within the boundaries of Fair Use.

The International Journal of Communication encourages authors to employ fair use in their scholarly publishing wherever appropriate. Fair use is the right to use unlicensed copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your own work, in some circumstances. We consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication, created by the International Communication Association and endorsed by the National Communication Association, and you should too. If you have any questions about whether fair use applies to your uses of copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your scholarship, simply include your rationale, grounded in the Best Practices, as a supplementary document with your submission.