Graduate student Robert Nathan Samet, supervised by Dr. Sylvia Yanagisako, will undertake a systematic, local-level, social science investigation of the relationship between democracy and the press in Venezuela. Although it is commonly assumed that a free press promotes democratic ideals of openness, accountability, and public-mindedness, recent lessons of "democratization" reveal a more tangled skein. On one hand, private media outlets can privilege certain voices, protect the interests of the propertied classes, and monopolize the means of cultural production; on the other hand, government regulations can create their own exclusions, privileges, and monopolies. Such is the paradox of the press in Venezuela, where the field of journalism is polarized along political lines.
The researcher will investigate the current disjuncture between the ideal of journalism as a force for democracy and the actual institutions of the press in Venezuela through intensive participant observation at three Caracas-based newspapers, chosen to represent different sectors of print journalism. He will work alongside journalists on a day-to-day basis to observe journalism politics and practices as well as to develop rapport needed for successful interviews. To provide context for the ethnographic case studies, he also will conduct semi-structured interviews with the representatives of the full range of Venezuelan journalism, including broadcast journalists, foreign correspondents, and journalism professors, as well as journalists representing a wide variety of Venezuelan newspapers. Finally, he will do content analyses of newspaper articles and legal documents.
Social scientists increasingly have become interested in what makes democracy succeed or fail. However, most research has been conducted at the national level and is therefore unable to answer questions about the daily practices that bring about those successes and failures. This research is important because it will be one of the first social science studies that will employ the tools of ethnography to investigate closely the actual practices that comprise the relationship between journalism and democracy. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.
