Transparency and Audience Participation: A View From Media Directors and Editors in Chile

Constanza Hormazábal

doi:10.17231/comsoc.46(2024).5694

Authors

Constanza Hormazábal Facultad de Comunicación, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago de Chile, Chile https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2870-3333

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.46(2024).5694

Keywords:

media accountability, media transparency, audience participation, ethics, journalism

Abstract

Today, audiences have different platforms to debate about journalism, in which media accountability begins with citizens publicly assessing it. Transparency becomes relevant as a normative construct that is linked to social responsibility and journalism’s social validation. Instruments for audience participation have been established to show and explain the norms and values that underpin journalistic coverage.
Audience participation plays a key role in the process of media accountability in listening and giving voice to citizens. However, it has implications in the context of transparency, immediacy, global access, and interactivity, presenting significant challenges for the media in fulfilling their accountability to the public.
This research seeks to show, from the standpoint of media directors and editors in Chile, how they perceive media accountability instruments in order to describe and characterize transparency as well as audience participation in the country. Based on an exploratory study of qualitative methodology, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with directors from television, newspaper, radio, and digital media.
These issues have been little explored as objects of study in Chile, and there is limited research in this field, coinciding with a decline in citizens’ trust in the media. For this reason, investigating and analyzing the instruments of transparency and audience participation within the framework of media accountability can open new perspectives of analysis to understand the current situation of the media in Chile and its relationship with audiences.

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Author Biography

Constanza Hormazábal, Facultad de Comunicación, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago de Chile, Chile

Constanza Hormazábal is a PhD candidate at Universidad de los Andes in Chile. She holds a master’s degree in Communication from the same university, as well as an MBA in Strategic Communication from Universidad Diego Portales and ESERP Business School. A graduate in Social Communication from Universidad Diego Portales, she currently serves as the director of the School of Journalism at Universidad UNIACC in Chile. Her research focuses on media accountability, journalistic ethics, and the right to information. She is affiliated with several research associations, including the Asociación Chilena de Investigadores en Comunicación, the Associação Latino-Americana de Pesquisadores em Comunicação, and the International Association for Media and Communication Research.

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