Participatory Communication in the Third World: A Latin American Perspective

Abstract

Notions of access and participation in communication have gained significance mainly in the last ten years or so. They can be found in the texts and resolutions of international organizations, in reports of communication specialists, and in the political programmes of many governments today. These there have because popular in international seminars and are being mentioned frequently in journals and communication publications. However, it is important to emphasize that, in practice, public access and participation in communication hardly exist, except, in a very limited way, in a number of small localized experiments. At the same time, the growing importance of these concepts should not be under-estimated and their origins should be explored.