Communication to build a new future

In a chronic substratum of economic inequality, Latin America has been transformed in the last decade into a changing scenario with regard to a crisis of political representation, which has generated, in turn, a weakening of democracies. This is expressed in acts of corruption on the part of governments, coups, suspicions of electoral fraud or breach of electoral promises, sometimes even reversing what was promised in the campaign to the contrary. Leaders with an authoritarian populist profile emerge from the right and the left and the republican powers blur their borders of their functions and responsibilities. A social and political polarization of different nuances has increased throughout the region. Social movements emerge with different representation from that of political parties. The migratory currents pass through the countries altering their economies and cultures and having a social impact on the receiving citizenships. Women assert themselves in social and political settings, generating novel transformations of impact. The exploitation of the land in all its forms, by strong dehumanized economic interests, endangers natural, cultural and social resources. All these events are reported informatively by the mass media and social networks.

In general, the story and the interpretation of events are in the hands of the hegemonic media that generate, as they have always done, currents of opinion and in some cases setting the agenda for the governments themselves when not complicity with them. The experience that humanity goes through with the pandemic has accentuated the emergence of the scenarios presented; According to the regions of the planet, the wounds will have different intensity of damage. The truth is that those of us who work in communication, with a vocation, for interests that aim at the construction of a responsible and participatory citizenship, in terms of the contribution of values, do so in favor of the strengthening of a truly representative democracy. In this line of action we find ourselves with an unprecedented challenge in the history of media communication: to disarm and correct the emphasis on the concealment or distortion of the truth that the hegemonic media sowed as an informative modality, putting at risk the essence of human communication. Fake news, disinformation, information bias, discrediting and ideological subjectivity sometimes exercised militantly by media communicators are aggravated by the capillary and uncritical dissemination to which social networks dangerously contribute.

We also observe that the operation of social networks in the hands of powerful companies with an excessive profit purpose, sustained on the promotion of consumerism, transform a tool of positive technological and cultural contributions at risk of unconscious conditioning of human behavior.

Pope Francis challenges us by challenging us to build a new future, a new viable reality for all. You will have to be creative to think and recreate a new economy, make Laudato Si a reality and walk with the inspiration of Fratelli Tutti. Communication, then, must become a practice and paradigm that contribute to making it a reality.

Editorial note of Punto de Encuentro Magazine December 2020