Human rights acts : media reform and politics in Argentina

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which human rights are mobilised as part of the development and implementation of broadcasting policies in Argentina and draws on a nine-month period of ethnographic fieldwork across several sites and events in Buenos Aires. By focusing on the highly debated Audio-Visual Communication Services (ACS) Act, I examine how human rights have contributed to a transformation of the terrain of politics in the country. In Argentina, human rights constitute a prominent moral-legal discourse within the domestic political field. I argue that they have served as a means for phrasing citizens' demands, formulating public policies and envisaging new forms of governance. In particular, the research focuses on how the expansion of human rights discourses, instruments and regulations have signalled a transformation at the level of government and activist practices in contemporary Argentina. The central research questions driving the study are: How do human rights shape, and how are they shaped by, the process of development and implementation of the ACS Act? How do human rights contribute to the emergence of new forms of activist and government practices in Argentina? In which ways are human rights being transformed and reenacted in the actions of activists, experts and public officers?

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English