Panel on the media representations of poverty and development in Latin America

A panel with the title “Battle over meanings: Media representations of poverty and development in Latin America” was organised on 12 June 2015 as part of the 8th Nordic Latin American Research Network (NOLAN) Conference in Helsinki. The panel was coordinated by Alberto D. Cimadamore, (Scientific Director of CROP) and Johanna Kivimäki (Coordinator of UniPID) with the aim of presenting and discussing academic research on the connections between media, poverty and development. It was particularly concerned with how notions of poverty, as well as anti-poverty policies and interventions, are conveyed by different types of media in Latin America. Cimadamore opened the panel by presenting on how poverty is represented in some relevant Latin American newspapers with agenda setting capabilities, while Kivimäki focused on the discriminating representation of urban poor in Venezuelan newspapers.

Further panel contributions:

• Carolina Matos (City University, London) presented the main arguments of her upcoming book concerning women’s rights vis-à-vis the media’s representation, reproduction and construction of gender roles;
• Ewa Sapiezynska’s paper (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw) examined the media censorship of reporting on the discrimination against the poor women working as house cleaners in Chile;
• Lorena Pérez-García (Vrije Universiteit, Brussels) presented her research on the use of ICT-based mass media by the indigenous communities in Mexico;
• Liina-Maija Quist (University of Helsinki) presented an analysis of the newspaper representations of conflict between fishermen and the oil industry in Mexico;
• Virpi Salojärvi (University of Helsinki) focused on the role of media in the political conflict of Venezuela.

In the debate it was noted particularly that there is insufficient scientific information in the media on the causes and, therefore, solutions for poverty, and that there is a need to draw more attention to the development models supported — explicitly or implicitly — by the media representations of poverty. The panel participants agreed to follow up on the positive collaboration that has been initiated in this context and explore possible ways to publish the papers presented.

*****

Published in CROP newsletter, July 2015