Reclaiming ?freedom?: how professional journalists in Ecuador use online media to challenge the government and create a new hegemony
- Authors
- Ord??ez, Sylvia
- Format
- MasterThesis
- Status
- publishedVersion
- Description
After 10 years of confrontations between media and the government in Ecuador and a series of regulations as well as lawsuits against journalists and media outlets, the traditional journalistic practices had to adapt to this new environment. A group of journalists with long trajectories that had to abandon the private media outlets in which they have worked almost for a life-time, now speak from online platforms to contest the governmental discourse, by discrediting it and advocating for the return of their ?freedoms? framed in a liberal model of media. Thus, the question to be answered in this dissertation is in which ways are they are using new media to undermine the government and create a new hegemony? The answer to this question will be shaped through the analysis of articles and descriptions of the online platforms created by some of these journalists. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) will perform a textually-oriented assessment of the power relations between media and political actors and the specific socio-political context as well as the online realm. In addition, analytical concepts of Discourse Theory (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985) and Laclau?s Populist Theory (2007) will be used to evaluate the ?antagonistic? aspects in regimes of representation, the construction of a new account of ?the people? and the establishment of a new ?hegemony? based on liberal principles. Concerning online media, it will be discussed as a form of public arena, permeated by mercantilist logics and organized under hierarchical structures already built in the offline world, with the function of contributing to the accomplishment of the objectives of the hegemonic discourse. Finally, within this struggle for power between elites, the voice of the citizens is deemed to be forgotten as well as the democratic promise relegated to a secondary place in the list of priorities. This dissertation concludes that the antagonistic relations between media and politics as well as the disagreements about ethical perspectives of media practices have not changed with the emergence of digital platforms, as in the Latin American region, independently from ideological orientations, power structures remain top-down.
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Language
- eng
- Topic
- COMUNICACI?N
MEDIOS DIGITALES
POL?TICA
PERDIODISMO DIGITAL
DEMOCRACIA
POPULISMO
ECUADOR
- Repository
- Repositorio SENESCYT
- Rights
- openAccess
- License
- openAccess