ABSTRACT

This book provides a transversal scholarly exploration of the multiple changes exhibited around Venezuelan media during the Chávez regime. Bringing together a body of original research by key scholars in the field, the book looks at the different processes entailed by Chavismo’s relationship with the media, extending their discussion beyond the boundaries of the specific cases or examples and into the entire articulation of a nearly-perfect communicational hegemony. 

It explores the wide-ranging transformations in the national mediascape, such as how censorship of journalistic endeavors has impacted news consumption/production in the country to the complexities of Venezuelan filmmaking during Chavismo, from the symbolic postmortem persistence of Chávez to the profound transformations undergone by telenovelas, from the politically induced migration of online audiences to the reinvention of media spaces for cultural journalism as forms of resistance. 


Allowing readers to engage not only with the particular case studies or exemplars presented, but with the underlying cultural, economic, political, societal, and technical aspects that come into play and which allow the extrapolation of this body of research onto other national or international contexts, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students of journalism, communication, media studies, and politics.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

Entering the forest without noticing the trees

chapter 1|13 pages

Two films

A rhizomatic connection

chapter 4|15 pages

Rebellious audiences

Information platform migration and use of WhatsApp in a tyrannized society

chapter 5|16 pages

From riches to rags

The decline of Venezuelan telenovelas

chapter 7|16 pages

The return of the Caudillos in the digital age – changing hegemony and Media Caesarism

Continuities and changes in the news media landscape under the Chavismo

chapter 8|14 pages

Chávez’s eyes

An iconic presence in the Venezuelan political communication

chapter 9|17 pages

Between resistance and reinvention

Cultural diffusion in Venezuelan media