Mapping Digital Media: Argentina

The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs.

In Argentina, there have been few changes in media and news consumption that can be linked to digital migration. Television continues to be the medium of reference.

Digitization and the consequent rise in the use of social networks and digital platforms on the part of Argentinean society are changing the system of social production and the circulation of information and entertainment in a country where the expansion of broadband connections has doubled over the past five years. There is a dramatically increasing number of blogs that contribute to the political debate and offer news and opinions from various fields of expertise and that feed back into the workings of mainstream media.

The digital divide remains a central issue, not only in terms of social groups without the economic means and the skills to use the net, but also in terms of the uneven quality of the access provided in different parts of the country.

In any case, the transformative potential of digitization will no doubt be affected by the polarization of the social and political forces of Argentina that prevents rival groups from acknowledging shared goals and agreeing on a course of action to obtain all the possible benefits of this transformation.