Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mediating Local, National, & Regional Politics through Community Television

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Brown University doctoral student, Jennifer Ashley, under the guidance of Dr. Matthew C. Gutmann and Dr. Kay B. Warren, will analyze the role of local, national, and regional media in the process by which low-income urban residents engage with democracy and come to believe in particular political projects. The research will be carried out in Chile. Researchers reported a high level of political participation and a significant number of independent media outlets in Chile during the 1980s. Surprisingly, both decreased significantly with the return to democracy in the 1990s, a puzzle that forms the basis for this investigation.The researcher will focus on a community television station in La Victoria, a low-income area in Santiago, Chile, which has received national attention for transmitting alternative programming to residents in nearby neighborhoods. Through an ethnographic study of La Victoria, the researcher will analyze media production, circulation, and reception within the context of daily social and political life of La Victoria. Research methodologies will include participant observation in television production and community settings, semi-structured interviews, small group discussions, and video archival investigations. Key questions guiding the research will be: (1) What is the role of local media in contributing to a renewal of neighborhood political activity in La Victoria? (2) How does the presence of community television influence how low-income residents respond to national television coverage of local, national, and regional political issues? (3) How might community television facilitate the access of low-income residents to debates within a "Latin American" public sphere? The significance of this project lies in its focus on the relation between media use and democracy at the local and regional levels. The research will contribute to furthering theoretical understanding of how media affects democratic political engagement by analyzing the production and reception of an entire programming flow, rather than one discrete program or genre of television. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.