About Us

Chiara Sáez Baeza

Sociologist. Doctor of Communication with a Post Doctorate in Public Policy. Associate Professor of the Faculty of Communications and Image of Universidad de Chile. Researcher in charge of Fondecyt Project 1230748.

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Patricia Peña

Journalist and B.A in Social Communication. Master of Social Communication and Master of New Media. Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Communications and Image of Universidad de Chile. President of the Chilean chapter of Internet Society (ISOC). Director of Fundación Datos Protegidos. Co-researcher of the project.

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Javier García García

Doctor of Law and Master of Fundamental Rights specializing in Freedoms of Information. President of the Observatory of the Right to Communication (ODC, Observatorio del Derecho a la Comunicación). Research associate of the Latin American Observatory of Regulation, Media and Convergence (OBSERVACOM). Research academic of the Faculty of Law of UDLA and co-researcher of the project.

Jorge Avilés Rojas

Journalist and B.A in Social Communication from Universidad de Chile. Research assistant. Co-author of various publications on media pluralism.

The team has an extensive track record (together and separately) in teaching, research, outreach and influence in the field of this research. The most recent scientific publications and reports for policymakers include: Sáez (2020); Peña (2020a); Peña (2020b); García (2020b); García (2022a); García, Sáez y Peña (2021); Gómez y Sáez (2022); Sáez y García (2022); Sáez, Avilés, Riffo, García, Jiménez y Breull (2022). 

García recently finished his doctoral thesis on the radio spectrum as a scarce resource in the distribution of telecommunications and audiovisual concessions. He is also pursuing a strategic litigation case before the UN Human Rights Committee about discrimination of community broadcasters in access to audiovisual licenses CCPR, 2018). 

Sáez has imparted undergraduate courses and seminars on communication policies for years. She is also responsible for the webpage Pluralismotv.org, that generates quantitative and qualitative evidence about the status of information pluralism in different types of network television (national, regional, local and community) and the lack of specific measures from the corresponding regulatory agency, which has even broken its own law in regard to Article 1 (which connects the constitutional mission of proper functioning with ensuring pluralism of contents in general), and Article 14 regarding tools and procedures for guaranteeing pluralism in news programs.

Peña is director of the Diploma Course in Digital Communication Projects of the Faculty of Communications and Image (FCEI), in addition to founder and member of the Chilean Chapter of Internet Society and associate researcher of the Latin American Observatory of Regulation, Media and Convergence (OBSERVACOM). In 2021, Peña and Sáez carried out an open course on Freedom of Expression and New Constitution at Universidad de Chile. 400 people enrolled, and two key topics were regulatory institutionalism and Internet.

The three researchers have attended parliamentary commissions since 2011 to contribute evidence to the discussion of various bills linked to the research project (digital TV, spectrum distribution, penalization of unlicensed broadcasting, pluralism, regulation of Internet platforms, etc.) and have collaborated with consulting teams of members of the Constitutional Convention in related matters (right to communication, public media, convergent regulation, connectivity, spectrum). In addition to the foregoing, Peña and Sáez were members and presidents of the Civil Society Council of the Telecommunications Undersecretariat between 2014 and 2021. Avilés has been a teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Communications and Image of Universidad de Chile.