For three days, educators from across the country came together in La Serena to talk about the intersections between science, communications, technology and society in a transdisciplinary manner.
The event was organized by the Chilean Network of Science, Technology and Society (CTS-Chile), a citizen initiative born in 2012 as a way to “join the efforts of a diversity of actors -academic and non-academic, with training in basic and social sciences, from Chilean and foreign institutions- who for several years have been trying to challenge the strict division between technological-scientific and social analysis”.
Their XI Meeting, held on January 3rd to 5th, 2024 in Region IV with the support of the local campus of Universidad Central, gathered “more than 150 registered participants, and one of this year’s objectives was to approve a greater formalization of this space as an association, which was approved in the last day’s assembly”, expounded our lead researcher Chiara Sáez.
Sáez , a sociologist and doctor of communication, explained that #RegulaciónConvergente “participated with a thematic discussion and Patricia Peña (co-researcher) was present in two other activities related to disinformation and digital gender violence, in addition to being part of the organizing team”.
“The title of our exhibition was ‘Convergent Regulatory Institutionalism of Communication as Institutional Innovation for Technological Development’, and the focus was on sharing the most innovative aspects we have found so far in the institutions we are researching, as well as exchanging perspectives on institutional innovation in other sectors nationwide and the challenges for the field of communications in this regard.”
The main purpose of the CTS-Chile Network is to be a platform that disseminates and collaborates in specific research and intervention initiatives with an interdisciplinary approach to address socio-technical topics of public interest.
In this sense, Chiara Sáez explained that “the CTS Network is an interdisciplinary space, and participating in this meeting led us to exchange opinions and perspectives with people from other areas and professions. This allowed us to see that many problems we detect in the institutionalism of communications regulation can also be found in other sectors, such as industrial policy or infrastructure development. There was a cross-cutting impression in the debate that in terms of more complex digital challenges, Chile has been falling behind compared to other countries in the region with shared common aspects, such as Colombia and Mexico, all part of the Pacific Alliance and the OECD.”
In turn, co-researcher Javier García said that “debates about the regulation of the telecommunications, media and Internet activity are focusing on what and what not to regulate, but there is little discussion about who must be in charge of applying the regulation, in other words, little attention is being paid to the institutional framework and its configuration”.
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