News Media Access for Civil Society Actors During Democratisation Processes: The Case of the Transitional Justice Campaign in Uruguay

Abstract

ABSTRACT Theoretical scholarship on media democratisation neglects the role of representing groups in civil society, which in new democracies emerging from authoritarian regimes are frequently marginalised. These groups may also contest the form of democracy that has been implemented, and the way in which it deals with key transitional issues such as past human rights violations. This study focuses on how such groups are represented in one post-authoritarian society: Uruguay, which returned to democracy in 1985. Through examining media access for civil society groups in the newspaper coverage of two critical plebiscites on transitional justice issues (1989 and 2009), combined with interviews with journalists and civil society representatives, it argues that there are significant barriers to media access for civil society actors in the return to democracy, which relate both to changes during the democratisation process and domestic journalistic norms. This signals the need for both greater attention to the normative media role of representation during processes of democratisation and a more critical approach to media democratisation theory.