This article was published in Revista Zócalo (May, 2017). If you want to read the article, click here.
Portada de la Revista Zócalo (Mayo 2016)
In historical terms, media observatories were born in the late 1990s in Brazil and at the beginning of the following decade, in 2002, at the World Social Forum. However, the ideas of understanding communication as a right and observing communicative processes comes much earlier, for example, from the first academic research centers on communication and journalism, from the international system for the protection of human rights, and from initiatives of citizens that in the decades of the seventies and eighties were dedicated to publicly observe the media communication. All these efforts are marked by diversity since there is no single way of observing communication, but especially since each initiative responds to very particular characteristics regarding the time and space in which these observations were developed. That is, it is not the same to watch American television in the seventies in the context of the Cold War, than watching the Mexican telenovelas in the twenty-first century. In this regard, I would like to propose an agenda of what, from my point of view, the media observatories in Mexico could work in the next decade.
The approach to this plan should be based on an analysis of the historical, sociopolitical and cultural context of communication in Mexico. For reasons of space, I can not go into this respect. However, I perceive that four elements mark the present times. The first of these has to do with the concentration and centralization of communication. New telecommunications regulations, as well as global technological development, have gradually brought some of the big monopolies in Mexico down. However, we are now facing a wave of global concentration of companies that directly affect Mexico. Secondly, it should be noted that the system of political communication in Mexico is controlled by political parties and is a topic that will give much work in the following years. Thirdly, it seems to me remarkable that a state manages our lives that in recent years has proved incapable of maintaining public safety, which includes ensuring the security of those professionally journalists engaged in reporting. Finally, the fourth point indicates a significant transformation of the audiences in Mexico. On the one hand, we will begin to see new generations of Mexicans who will no longer grow up under the dominant influence of the political culture and entertainment promoted by Televisa and, on the other hand, we are before what Guillermo Orozco has called the “technological migration of the audiences,” from analogue to digital communication systems.
In this context, there are countless things to do. Here are some of the most relevant ones. (It is worth noting that this agenda should not be seen as a blur and a new account: observatories should create their agendas and maintain the work they have done for years.) Something critical that observatories can create is maps of communication in Mexico. In general, the Mexican State has been characterized by producing terrible information about it. The information is scarce and with little possibility of being systematized and compared. Therefore, observatories could collect this information and generate projects that seek to fill the existing information gaps. For example, there could be a collaborative project to create a census and maps of all the hyperlocal and digital media in the country. This would allow a new look at the processes of concentration and centralization of the country, as well as an x-ray of local journalism.
Another pressing issue has to do with evaluating freedom of expression in Mexico. Yes, it is true, as many intellectuals have written, that in Mexico we have a freedom of expression that did not exist for much of the 20th century. Now we can criticize the president, and no one is going to disappear those who criticize. However, the constant celebration of freedom of expression has hidden other realities that are pernicious for this matter. An element of primary importance is the growing deterioration of security conditions for Mexicans to exercise their freedom of expression and mainly to practice journalism. Local governments (see just the case of Veracruz), as well as organized crime, have murdered, deprived of their freedom, and intimidated journalists and citizens who have sought to manifest critically against politicians, businesspeople, and criminals. Here it is important to add, the increasing criminalization of social protest. So far, many organizations have dedicated their efforts to investigate, understand and denounce this situation. This is a task that observatories must continue.
Media relations, power, and democracy can also be the subject of study and activation of media observatories. The political class controls the system of political communication in Mexico, in particular by the parties. In this system, citizens very few opportunities for participation. The Mexican State must reform itself and to do this, it must broaden its view on the concept of the political communication system, which is currently restricted to the monolithic and useless system of spots during the election campaigns. The state must seek ways to communicate political elites and citizens, to ensure that there are media outlets that exercise journalism in better conditions, and to stop controlling the media through the discretionary allocation of public resources. For this reason, observatories could carry out investigations of international comparative law to propose models of political communication and distribution of public expenses; propose innovative models for the strengthening of media dedicated to journalism; oversee the structure and work of the public media; point out the impoverishment of journalists’ working conditions and seek solutions to this problem; and investigate censorship and journalistic self-censorship.
Finally, media observatories can pay much more attention to audiences. Studying audiences is not easy or cheap because it involves doing surveys to assess and measure cultural consumption, doing ethnographic work that takes a long time, or now, to develop technologies to analyze the behavior of audiences directly. However, it would be imperative that observatories could provide information on this. In Mexico, we have information that is filtered from the commercial companies, and on the other hand, as I mentioned, there is scattered and poor quality information produced by the government. From collaborative works, media observatories could generate a national survey that year by year measures the cultural consumption of Mexicans. Better still, open access technologies could be developed for the measurement of media consumption and technological use in our country. With these works, we could have new looks on the “technological migration of audiences,” from analog to digital communication systems.
What to do with all this information and research work? The work of the observatories would have to have four transverse axes. The first is the development of technology for communicative studies. That is, observatories, by themselves, produce technologies that allow them to collect digital information to analyze the Internet of things and what is known as big data. Also, these technologies could be used to create collaborative works for the analysis of communicative structures in Mexico (media mapping), and to conduct an audience analysis. The second is to accompany and advise journalists and citizens on freedom of expression, use the international human rights system to denounce the Mexican reality, and create proposals for Law to transform public communication in the country. The third axis is the education for reception and media literacy. Observatories can use the knowledge they generate to create formal and non-formal education proposals for journalists and citizens, to contribute to the development of professionals and critical audiences. Finally, the fourth axis has to do with journalism. On the one hand, few observatories are led by journalists. Critical analysis of communication requires the analytical look at these information agents. On the other hand, in Mexico we have to get rid of the adage of “dog does not eat dog” and create media observatories where journalists are dedicated to analyzing journalism critically.
Citation for this article:
Larrosa-Fuentes, J. S. (2017, mayo 1). Una agenda para analizar los medios en México. Revista Zócalo, (207), 9–11.