Public communication policies in Argentina: disarming the meanings of communication students and teachers about the LSCA

Abstract

The following paper presents the results of a research project that studies the ideas around communication as a right from students and teachers of the Communication Sciences Faculty (FCC) of the National University of Córdoba (UNC) from Argentina. This inquiry appears from the need to understand what happened to the academic community in the years in which the Audiovisual Communication Services Law (LSCA) was effectively implemented —sanctioned in 2009— with its modifications over time. This law sought to regulate and demonopolize multimedia powers and challenge the idea that information is not a commodity. In order to approach the ideas —perceptions, meanings and evaluations— of the students and teachers, two questionnaires were carried out for the students and in-depth interviews for the teachers. The results were that the students do not have a clear and precise knowledge about the Law like the teachers do, but only those who were involved in the subject and have proposed/participated in activities around the Law’s implementation. Finally, teachers and students pointed out that the enactment of the law was valuable in terms of democratic matters. However, they expressed a feeling that the Law was a dispute between the Government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the Clarín group, and it could not be carried out with a real implementation.