The Roots of El Salvador’s Alternative and Digital Media Environment

Abstract

This chapter sets the scene by situating the four media projects under study within a framework of El Salvador’s mainstream and alternative media ecologies, contextualized by the country’s political, social, economic, and technological realities. This chapter also develops the theoretical framework necessary for understanding the role of technology in alternative media and social change, introducing the idea that El Salvador’s realities, including limited Internet access in this digital era, require a hybridized, or mestizaje (Martin Barbero 1993), approach to the understanding of alternative media. This chapter provides an overview of what other scholarly research shows about alternative media and its relationship to activism, participation, and technology.