Doctoral Dissertation Research: Visions of Democracy, Practices of the Press: The Field of Journalism in Venezuela

研究生罗伯特·内森·萨米特（Robert Nathan Samet）将在西尔维亚·柳奈吉萨科（Sylvia Yanagisako）博士的指导下，对委内瑞拉民主与新闻之间的关系进行系统的地方级社会科学调查。尽管人们普遍认为新闻自由促进了开放、负责和公共意识的民主理想，但最近的“民主化”教训揭示了一个更加错综复杂的问题。 一方面，私营媒体可以特权某些声音，保护有产阶级的利益，垄断文化生产手段;另一方面，政府法规可以创造自己的排斥，特权和垄断。 这就是委内瑞拉新闻界的悖论，新闻界沿着政治路线沿着两极分化，研究人员将通过对三家加拉加斯报纸的深入观察，调查目前新闻作为民主力量的理想与委内瑞拉新闻界的实际机构之间的脱节。他将每天与记者一起工作，观察新闻政治和实践，并建立成功采访所需的融洽关系。为了提供民族志案例研究的背景，他还将与委内瑞拉新闻界的代表进行半结构化访谈，包括广播记者，外国记者和新闻学教授，以及代表各种委内瑞拉报纸的记者。最后，他将对报纸文章和法律的文件进行内容分析。社会科学家越来越对民主的成功或失败感兴趣。然而，大多数研究都是在国家一级进行的，因此无法回答有关导致这些成功和失败的日常做法的问题。这项研究是重要的，因为它将是第一个社会科学研究，将采用民族志的工具，以密切调查的实际做法，包括新闻和民主之间的关系。这项研究也将有助于社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student Robert Nathan Samet, supervised by Dr. Sylvia Yanagisako, will undertake a systematic, local-level, social science investigation of the relationship between democracy and the press in Venezuela. Although it is commonly assumed that a free press promotes democratic ideals of openness, accountability, and public-mindedness, recent lessons of "democratization" reveal a more tangled skein. On one hand, private media outlets can privilege certain voices, protect the interests of the propertied classes, and monopolize the means of cultural production; on the other hand, government regulations can create their own exclusions, privileges, and monopolies. Such is the paradox of the press in Venezuela, where the field of journalism is polarized along political lines.The researcher will investigate the current disjuncture between the ideal of journalism as a force for democracy and the actual institutions of the press in Venezuela through intensive participant observation at three Caracas-based newspapers, chosen to represent different sectors of print journalism. He will work alongside journalists on a day-to-day basis to observe journalism politics and practices as well as to develop rapport needed for successful interviews. To provide context for the ethnographic case studies, he also will conduct semi-structured interviews with the representatives of the full range of Venezuelan journalism, including broadcast journalists, foreign correspondents, and journalism professors, as well as journalists representing a wide variety of Venezuelan newspapers. Finally, he will do content analyses of newspaper articles and legal documents. Social scientists increasingly have become interested in what makes democracy succeed or fail. However, most research has been conducted at the national level and is therefore unable to answer questions about the daily practices that bring about those successes and failures. This research is important because it will be one of the first social science studies that will employ the tools of ethnography to investigate closely the actual practices that comprise the relationship between journalism and democracy. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.