In a context in which digital platforms concentrate information, advertising and attention, the absence of a regulatory framework poses urgent questions. “Who safeguards the country’s cultural diversity? Who protects audiences? Who guarantees that our stories keep circulating in the midst of global noise?” writes Diego Cáceres Bustos, a student of journalism at Universidad de Chile.
In Chile, we talk a lot about digitalization but little about what it means for culture. The public debate focuses on connection speed or the expansion of platforms as if the digital were only infrastructure. However, this phenomenon also transforms the ways in which our cultural expressions are created, circulated and recognized. Behind every algorithm, there is a way of organizing the public conversation, producing meaning and building community.
While radio, television and digital services intertwine on the same screen, our institutions continue to operate as if they were separate worlds. The National Television Council (CNTV) regulates television, the Telecommunications Undersecretariat (SUBTEL) telecommunications, and the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage (MINCAP) artistic contents. Three different bodies for an interconnected ecosystem that no longer recognizes these boundaries. Gaps open up in this multiple coordination that global platforms fill with their own rules, designed far from our language, sensitivities and local interests.
Chile does not have an institutional framework that thinks about convergence, the process by which digitalization brings together or integrates the worlds of audiovisual, telecommunications and Internet. This is the case with several radio stations today, which maintain their AM or FM broadcasts while also streaming online, producing podcasts, and broadcasting videos with live content and shows in audiovisual format. streamings por la web, producen podcasts y emiten videos con contenidos en vivo y programas en formato audiovisual.
In a context in which platforms concentrate information, advertising and attention, the absence of a common framework generates urgent questions: Who safeguards the country’s cultural diversity? Who protects audiences? Who guarantees that our stories keep circulating in the midst of global noise?
Talking about convergent regulation is not a technical matter. It is a conversation about cultural sovereignty and democracy. It means rethinking the role of the State not as a spectator but as a guarantor of plural, diverse and transparent communication. It means understanding that regulation is also cultural policy and, above all, political culture that determines which voices are heard (or not). It is thinking about public policies that strengthen local cultural production against big platforms and establish clear rules for their operation. Regulatory convergence entails updating regulatory frameworks so that the rights and principles that govern traditional media also do so in the digital environment.
A group of researchers from the Fondecyt Project on Convergent Regulation has sought to open this debate by comparing international experiences and proposing ways for Chile to devise its own model. It is not about copying regulatory frameworks but imagining an architecture of our own that integrates governance, diversity and digital rights in a single approach.
In other countries such as Canada, Colombia or Mexico, convergent institutionalism was the answer to a change of era with the arrival of digital platforms and their influence in the world of telecommunications and broadcasting. In Chile, this still seems to be a pending conversation. And in times of global platforms, this narrative is facing the tension between the tangible nature of our institutions and the intangible quality of our digital memories. The time has come to acknowledge that the challenge is not only legal but also institutional progress.
Chile needs an institution that can regulate the cultural industry in the country, which encompasses these three sectors, telecommunications, audiovisual and digital platforms, from an autonomous and diverse perspective. But first we must spark the discussion about a cultural governance and sovereignty based on fostering our identity, representation and diversity.
This text was selected in the Palabra de Estudiante PP36 call to be published on the website of the journal Palabra Pública..
By Diego Cáceres Bustos | Main photo: Cloudette/Pexels
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