Financial repertoires in the making: Understanding the US dollar's popularization in Argentina

At the beginning of May 2018, after the Federal Reserve Bank had announced an increase in the benchmark interest rate, Argentina experienced a currency crisis that the central bank was unable to quell. As a result, the value of Argentina’s currency, the peso, fell nearly by 8 percent in one day against the US dollar, a devaluation noticeably higher than those experienced by other Latin American countries. For several days, in what has become a regular event over the past few decades, journalists eagerly discussed the peso–dollar exchange rate, which also had a prominent place in the news. In one prime time current affairs program, a journalist observed that during the first week of May, 3 percent of Twitter exchanges in Buenos Aires had included the word “dollar,” a percentage equivalent to that of New York City...