One World and Still Many Gaps: A Topological Analysis of Audiovisual and Digital Developments in the Mercosur Region.

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Global Communication and Social Change Interactive Paper Session

Abstract

This paper relates questions of power in governing communications to space and place. The argument developed is that policy documents contain a geographical dimension and thus reflect border-crossing practices of policy-making as shaped through existing international power constellations. The first part of this paper deals with the question of how geographical content is traceable in documents and brings to the fore underlying power geographies. A new framework of ‘rooting’ policy documents geographically and identifying ‘routed’ policy texts, ideas and settings is established for that purpose. In the second part, the documents from the Audiovisual (AMP) and the Digital (DMP) MERCOSUR Program are ‘geographically rooted’ and that way shown how space, nation-state and power interrelate in the design of the texts. These two cases are particularly interesting for this type of analyzes as they are first, international by nature and second, display the development of both regional audiovisual and digital policies in the MERCOSUR (Common Southern Market). Herby, the AMP stands for the cultural shaping of the MERCOSUR, whilst the DMP represents the drive for technological and economic development of the region. The analysis reveals the structure of border-crossing interactions in the development of communication policies in the MERCOSUR and displays their different scales of influence for the implementation of the ideas promoted through these inter-regional programs. The diffusion of certain understandings regarding communication policies from one geographical setting into others becomes evident as mode of multi-level governance of communicative spaces in the MERCOSUR. The regional level promotes the construction of communicative spaces through principles from outside the region and the necessity to implement these to foster the development of the audiovisual and digital sector. The analysis of each program brings to the fore different scales, as well as the missing links to policy developments in other emerging regional settings and reveals the still existing opportunity gap for the governance of communicative spaces all over the world.

Author

• Sarah Anne Ganter, U of Vienna