Non-core post – Another failed attempt at regulation…

While reading Holt’s piece on the story of media conglomeration/vertical integration, I kept coming back to Argentina’s recent history. Holt explains how studio companies started partnering up with distribution companies and broadcasters so as to control content and its distribution, a process enabled and even (although unintended at some point) promoted by the changing regulatory landscape. Well, Argentina’s past government crafted a law in 2009 precisely to separate content and distribution. The video I’m leaving here explains a bit of this. This law ended up being a failed attempt to democratize the media landscape, which was still regulated by a law enacted during the last military government, because it led to never-ending legal battles that held the audience hostage to arguments from both sides – it really was a political struggle dressed up as a fight for democracy. But I think it’s interesting to think of media convergence in other contexts where not only socio-political dynamics are different but also infrastructure access, like Jenkins suggests.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2015/03/argentina-reforming-media-landscape-150324101323459.html