Sintomas de uma sociedade que se emancipa : a mídia independente como exercício do direito à comunicação em Cuba

Abstract

The objective of this investigation is to substantiate the existence of a conflict between media independent of the partisan media structure and the Cuban State, evoked to present and discuss the concepts of citizenship, human rights, freedom of expression and the press; right to communication, alternative media, communicative citizenship and democratization of communication. To understand the tensions between the independent media and the authorities in the Cuban social and political context, it was necessary to recover and explain, from a critical perspective, the postulates that guided the definition of citizenship and human rights and determine the role of the press in the Soviet-style political regimes. Furthermore, we try to historicize the formation of the Cuban state media model - partly the result of the radical changes promoted by the 1959 revolution and the subsequent alliance of Fidel Castro's government with the Soviet Union -, the resurgence of independent media, from the creation of press agencies in the 1990s; the configuration of the blogosphere in the first decade of the 2000s, and the emergence and consolidation, starting in 2014, of dozens of journalistic websites, amid the expansion of citizens' access to the Internet. The results of the content analysis - which covered political and legal documents, articles published in official organizations, public interventions by the current president Miguel Díaz-Canel, editorial policies and journalistic articles published in six non-state vehicles - and testimonies from journalists, collaborators and readers /followers validated the thesis that, by operating in the formation of alternative spaces for information and debate, the existence of independent Cuban media is not compatible with the policies and legal norms that guide the operation of the Cuban state media model. At the same time, the independent digital media analyzed promoted the exercise of the right to communication, the practice of communicative citizenship and contributed to the democratization of communication in Cuba, from civil society, in the period 2016-2021.