Towards a Critical IPE of Media, Power and Regionalism

Abstract

We began our introduction questioning the extent to which the current clash over media reform and power in South America is related to questions concerning freedom of speech and structural change that are at work between media, power and new paths of development. The first issue is generally led by corporate media with regional and transnational influence, and the latter often voiced by neopopulist governments, following not dissimilar political paths of capitalism management and international insertion, but undeniably bound up in conflict. The authors in this collection have considered these fraught relations; however, we have sought to move beyond the discursive trap of siding with either media corporate powers in their attacks on government or governments as they confront corporate media power, reforming their role in democracies.