Esfera pública audiovisual y periodismo cultural. Nuevas políticas culturales (editoriales) a partir de la irrupción de lo audiovisual y electrónico

The general objective of this research was to give an account of the current configuration of the audiovisual “public sphere” in Argentina. For this purpose, we have applied a methodology that focused on the historical and sociological analysis by means of the use of secondary sources. In this last case, through investigations carried out by authors who tried to characterize the Latin American “peculiarity”, we attempted to demonstrate that in our societies, the government intervention and presence were essential. We gave an account of the “refeudalization” process of the “public sphere”, which an author as Habermas describes for the European societies of the 60s and realized that it is still present in them and also observed in Latin American societies. This process is developed from an interrelationship between the private and the public spheres and from the incorporation within the mentioned sphere, of electronic media such as radio and television. In Argentina particularly, because of that already mentioned government presence, the moment of configuring “video politics” takes place with the last return to democracy in the late 80s. What we point out for the area of politics is also valid for the journalistic field where we notice the emergence of “video journalism” which considers image as the only credible information rather than the content or reflexivity of that data. As regards the “intellectual” aspect, when related to the field of cultural journalism, we particularly examined those cases of some journalistic-cultural TV programs issued by public media because we could recognize in them a kind of “shelter” for “literate culture” carried forward by an audiovisual medium. Different was the case of cultural channels broadcast by cable TV in which the characteristics of a more segmented and targeted public, led to the production of a variety of formats, among which we can find the “traditional”samples of “cultural journalism”, literate or not, with a purely audiovisual narrative. Due to its education-oriented mark, “Encuentro” is the channel that has best succeeded in combining the reflexive and intellectual presence, within the framework of a production and aculture determined by the “audiovisual” concept. This may be a consequence of the deployment of a clear “cultural policy” which is determined to favor the lively and funny “entertainment” without disregarding the intellectual education.