News Media Access for Civil Society Actors During Democratisation Processes: The Case of the Transitional Justice Campaign in Uruguay

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Media access
• Uruguay
• media democratisation
• South America
• transitional justice
• media democracy

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank interviewees in Uruguay for their time, shared experience and knowledge in contributing to this research. The author would also like to thank the reviewers of this article for their incisive and supportive suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Interview with former journalist, 2015.

2 Interview with journalist, 2016.

3 Interview with journalist, 2016.

4 Interview with journalist, 2016.

5 Interview with former La Republica journalist, 2016.

6 Interview with journalist, 2016.

7 Interview with SERPAJ Uruguay representative, 2014.

8 Ibid.

9 Interview with trade union official, 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council PhD award and approved by the ethics committee of the College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow.