Chilean journalism in the 21st century

Segmented communication has become hegemonic and, in addition, the press is no longer part of an ideological struggle for world views and social projects, that is, for “truly representing” reality. The segmented commercial journalistic model. From the book “A courtly journalism. Press and society in 21st century Chile”. (Part 3, Chapter 3).

Eduardo Santa Cruz .Editorial Committee of Lom Editions .

8/2024. If one wanted to find a general criterion that would allow one to quickly characterize the fundamental changes experienced by the internal logic of journalism at the turn of the century, both at a general level and in Chilean particularity, it could be summarized as a reduction in the articulation between the different dimensions of any journalistic strategy, which we discussed above.

If in the last century this articulation was particularly complex and the hegemony of one of these dimensions occurred alternately, in the current situation and in an almost absolute way, the fact that the predominant criterion is much more economic than ideological-cultural, and even strictly journalistic, has been consecrated. In a certain way, the characteristic phenomenon of this model of society is manifested here, which is the reduction of all social practice to the economic logic of the market, a question noticeable in the most diverse levels.

In the case of communication in general and journalism in particular, the above is based especially on the phenomena of segmentation and digitalization. As we pointed out before, technological changes have made possible the development of a series of new practices in the treatment and production of information, which effectively constitute important changes with respect to those known and practiced for decades.

One of them is intermediality, that is, crossovers between the written press, radio, internet and TV to treat each other as informative material, which constitutes an important manifestation of the self-referentiality to which Bourdieu referred. All this, in an increasingly multimedia context and transversal to languages ​​and technological supports: this supports the growing tendency to transform the mass media of the 20th century, mutated into media platforms, where all codes and languages ​​and all technological supports coexist.

In addition to the above, it is possible to detect the coexistence of various information levels: some segmented by economic, social and cultural criteria, as occurs with the offer of cable news channels, where there is information that simulates the validity of a guiding and opinion-forming journalism and, also, the simulation of “citizen participation”, by means of collecting opinions or making “votes” on current issues, through the instruments offered by technological progress and in which something similar to a journalism “like before” is practiced.

There are also others such as “open or generalist” TV, where infotainment predominates, understood as the relationship between dramatic narrative and information, where the collective or social is read and explained from the individual, and also the so-called info-business, where advertising is disseminated surreptitiously and blatantly as if it were news, both issues to which we will return a little later. That is to say, a journalism of mass appeal in which news, reports and chronicles of “human content” predominate, with elements of fictional narrative and in which even the themes that allude to social globality are seen preferably from the individual drama.

That is to say, the logic is that each demand segment has its corresponding product to satisfy it or, in other words, the validity of as many forms of journalism as there are demands, being the basis that explains the explosion of genres and formats, articulated and related and, with it, the generation of ephemeral products, which last as long as the demand lasts, which generates an extra difficulty in making maps or cartographies of the functioning of the field.

The market is developing an increasing process of segmentation, aided by technology, creating increasingly specific “market niches”. The important thing is that it is aimed at a part of society, thus disdaining or leaving aside any pretensions of being global.

The “press models”, understood as structures and profiles of media as we saw above, as actors producing information and social meaning, have been converted into “business models”: how to respond to market demands and not, how to “represent” a public or social sector. Therefore, it is possible to affirm that the segmented commercial model has become the dominant journalistic model.

It is not that this model implies the supposed arrival of banality and sensationalism in the national press, issues also present in previous times, and that it cannot be serious or analytical, but what radically defines it is the abandonment of the claim to account for the social totality and, with it, any critical possibility, when it exists, is reduced to the fragment. Segmented communication became hegemonic and, in addition, the press is no longer within the framework of an ideological struggle for world views and social projects, that is, for “truly representing” reality.

Criticism of power, that is, an articulated vision of society, is becoming less and less possible and what remains are small partial critiques that do not touch on the structural or that are even functional to encourage the participation of certain market segments in media consumption. The above does not mean that there are no homogenization processes inherent to “mass communication”, but that these coexist, although in a subordinate form, with those of segmented communication, which are the predominant ones, or as Lozano points out, that the “mass” today is nothing more than one segment among others. This would be facilitated by the effects of social and cultural fragmentation and heterogenization caused by the neoliberal modernizing process, which would have created the conditions for profound and qualitative transformations at the level of the “receiving mass”, which would have dispersed into numerous “wandering audiences”, as we saw earlier when quoting Lozano, made up of infotainment consumers who wander through the television or digital offering, and who are no longer solely reading newspapers and magazines in paper form or watching television tied to a relatively fixed programming offer, as in past decades and who, thanks to technology, can be tracked, studied and contacted to individually profile tastes and consumption patterns.

This dominant press model implies that there are fewer and fewer views on the global and, with this, the possibility of a fight for “social truth” is replaced by the fight for plausibility in the market. As we have reiterated, plausibility is not simply similar to its referent, but rather what is usual, what happens most of the time and what common sense is willing to believe.

It is based on the naturalization of the social order, its aims and assumptions, which implies the displacement of politics, in its deepest sense. This implies, on the other hand, that it is no longer the facts that precede the news, with the possibility of construction and production of the former and its potential for manipulation and its effects of alienation. Beyond and contrary to that, what would be happening is that it is the information that generates the event and the facts, an issue enhanced by the development of public relations and communication consultancies, as well as information sources equipped with political and/or economic power to influence the production of content, as we will see below. Eduardo Santa Cruz