School of Journalism and Communication
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The UO School of Journalism and Communication offers programs leading to bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees. undergraduate students major in one of six areas: advertising, electronic media, communication studies, magazine journalism, news-editorial, or public relations. For more information on the School and its programs visit the School's web site.
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Browsing School of Journalism and Communication by Author "Cortes, Diego"
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Item Open Access Book Review: Guerrilla marketing counterinsurgency and capitalism in Colombia by A. L. Fattal, University of Chicago Press, 2018(Communication Review, 2020-07) Cortes, DiegoEvery year, scholars add a significant quantity of academic production to the already long list of publications on the Colombian conflict. For this reason, the media anthropologist Alexander Fattal, author of Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia, started his book’s introduction discussing his initial doubts about embracing another academic project on the political violence of that nation. The complexities he found at first glance around the Program for Humanitarian Attention to Demobilized, or PAHD, persuaded Fattal to pursue this academic project, resulting in the publication of one of the most awarded scholarships in the areas of Anthropology, Latin American Studies and Media Studies in 2018.Item Open Access Book Review: Trafficking: Narcoculture in Mexico and the United States.(Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 2020) Cortes, DiegoHéctor Amaya’s Trafficking illustrates the new forms of publicness in popular music, traditional U.S. newspapers, and digital bloggers resulting from the spike of criminal violence in Mexico since 2006. This wave of violence began when former president Felipe Calderon (2006–2012) intensified the war on drugs. A native of Sinaloa, one of the worst affected Mexican states for cartel actions, Amaya provides a theoretical contribution to understanding the phenomenon of criminal violence without presenting law-and-order normative solutions as First World social scientists typically do. He explains this avoidance as a political response to the historical role of normative “solutions” that tend to validate colonialist and neoimperialist agendas and, rather than resolve anything, foster dispossession and dislocation in the Third World.Item Open Access ‘Era mejor cuando éramos ilegales’ (it was better when we were illegals): Indigenous people, the State and ‘public interest’ indigenous radio stations in Colombia(Journal of Alternative and Community Media, 2019) Cortes, DiegoThis article discusses the intervention of the Colombian State in the development of indigenous radio stations, focusing on the case of the Misak and Nasa communities. As shown, these radio stations have had different contributions in these indigenous communities, such as forging a new generation of leaders, promoting their languages, and encouraging political mobilisation. However, these media projects have also brought new challenges for these communities, calling for a more careful consideration of the complexities of state intervention in community radio projects. This article contributes to a better understanding of the impact of state intervention in indigenous media, by focusing on three main features that illustrate some of the unintended consequences of these projects: 1) contradictory state legislation that, instead of empowering indigenous media projects, tamed their political potential; 2) the ‘natural’ role of radio stations as a ‘modern disruptors’ (Appadurai, 1996) that may have positives as well as negative consequence in the changes they generate in indigenous communities; and 3) the internal political struggles within these indigenous communities.Item Open Access Evangelical indigenous radio stations in Colombia: Between the promotion of social change and religious indoctrination(Global Media and Communication, 2020) Cortes, DiegoThis article refutes dominant views that define evangelical indigenous media as intrinsic tools for religious indoctrination. The case of the Colombian Misak community shows that evangelical radio stations can contribute to community building. However, the degree of the positive or negative contribution of evangelical media depends on the dominance of evangelical presence at indigenous localities. The rapid expansion of indigenized evangelical groups via the provision of social services has radicalized Evangelicals against views different from their own. As a result, these evangelical media are progressively leaving their role as promoters of positive social change to become tools for religious indoctrination.Item Open Access Foes and allies: the Catholic Church, Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO), and the emergence of the indigenous movement in Cauca, Colombia(Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2019) Cortes, DiegoLiterature on Latin American social movements has discussed the contributions of post-Second Vatican Council (SVC) (1963–1965) progressive branches of the Catholic Church in the formation of indigenous movements. However, this literature has largely ignored discussions on the intervention of non-SVC and conservative branches of the Catholic establishment. This article illustrates the role of the modernizing educational program Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO) (1949), a Catholic organization aligned with conservative forces of the Colombian State and developmental agencies from abroad, in the formation of the indigenous movement of the department of Cauca by Misak and Nasa indigenous people, who pioneered the indigenous movement in the country. ACPO provided educational tools and contacts that contributed to the creation of the indigenous movement of Cauca in the 1970s. However, it also promoted problematic technologies that affected indigenous territories and modes of understanding indigenous cultures that belittled the traditions of the Misak and Nasa indigenous people.Item Open Access INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION AND JOURNALISM IN COLOMBIA: HOW AND WHY(Jangwa Pana, 2016-12) Cortes, DiegoTaking as a case study the media representation on the 2008 Minga de Resistencia Social y Comunitaria (MRSC), this paper shows how the largest newspapers of national circulation, El Tiempo and El Espectador, and the TV News Caracol and RCN, represent the grievances of traditionally Colombian excluded sectors. Based on a content analysis of 238 newspaper articles and the news reports during this uprising, these document shows the visual and linguistic techniques employed by these media outlets to criminalize and make invisible, depending on the case and context, the political actions of these communities. As a conclusion, it is discussed how this type of representation is a result of three factors that affect mass media journalism in Colombia: the monopoly over mass media by small elite, the problems endured by journalists, and the ideological affinity between journalism and power in Colombia.Item Open Access Radio Indígenas y Estado en Colombia ¿Herramientas “políticas” o Instrumentos “policivos”?(REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE COMUNICACIÓN, 2019) Cortes, DiegoBase on the case of the indigenous radio stations Namuy Wam of the Misak (Guambiano) and Radio Payumat of the Nasa (Paez), this article shows the effects of the interventions of the state in the development of indigenous radio stations in Colombia. These media projects, especially those resulted from the political process in which members of the Catholic church and external collaborators participated actively, have contributed in different ways to the strengthening the collective political projects of those communities. However, due to the intervention of the estate, these projects also brought new challenges, especially economic ones, restraining their political potential.Item Open Access The politics of indigeneity: decolonizing historical memory and education in Colombia(Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 2024-02) Cortes, DiegoThis article explores how the Misak (Guambianos) from the Colombian southwest are revitalising their collective memory and militant politics in a nation that has historically prioritised its Spanish heritage. Through the analysis of twenty-month collaborative research conducted by three Misak University (MU) students and the article’s author (a non-Indigenous Colombian affiliated with a university from the Global North), the article claims that political engagement results from this community’s autonomous educational institutions and pedagogical practices. The MU is one of these Misak autonomous efforts engaging with non-traditional pedagogies, such as caminar el territorio, to promote a ‘militant indigenous identity’ committed to their cultural differentiation. These educational practices evolved from other methods for memory reproduction embraced by the Misak since colonial times. As the tearing down of the statues of Spanish conquistadores in 2020 shows, the Misak’s educational efforts have cultivated a new indigenous generation that seeks to make a political and cultural impact beyond their territory.Item Open Access The Quest for Indigenous Autonomy: Communication Media, Internal Conflicts, and Policy Reform in Colombia(Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2021) Cortes, DiegoIn 2013, the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) and the national government signed Agreement No. 547, which commissioned to the five main national indigenous organizations of the country the drafting of a bill to propel the strengthening of the indigenous media in Colombia. This political reform would represent a significant advance in the democratization of the historically monopolized and exclusive Colombian media landscape, thus fulfilling one of the mandates of the 1991 Colombian multicultural Constitution. However, due to internal conflicts within the indigenous leadership, these five organizations failed to present any bill to the Congress of the Republic of Colombia, wasting this historic opportunity. Based on this case, the discussion on "radical" Zapatista autonomy, and the concept of "indigenous utopias" proposed by Rappaport (2005) (rather than impossible dreams, objectives to strive for), this article argues that a robust autonomous indigenous governance depends on the constant search for a "utopian balance" between legal protections ( centripetal forces) and de facto practices (centrifugal actions). [territorial autonomy, neoliberal state co-optation, indigenous media producers, de facto autonomous practices]