Digital Satire in Latin America

How creators of online video critique politics and society and amplify public discourse in Latin American countries



This

book analyzes how digital-native audiovisual satire has become

increasingly influential in national public debates within Latin

America. Paul Alonso illuminates the role of online video in filling

gaps in sociopolitical critique left by television, traditional

journalism, and commercial entertainment while exposing some of the

prevalent tensions of the region.



Alonso draws on

interviews and analyzes media content to consider some of the most

representative and influential satirical shows born on the internet and

produced in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and Latinx

communities in the United States. He discusses YouTubers Chumel Torres,

Malena Pichot, Guille Aquino, Joanna Hausmann, and El Cacash; the

Enchufe.tv collective; and the video columnists Maria Paulina Baena from

La Pulla and Mari?ngela Urbina from Las Igualadas. These creators use

professional and non-mainstream practices and resources to dismantle

fake news, highlight social tensions, and offer in-depth content that

goes beyond confrontational attacks.



In contexts of

highly ideological polarization, Alonso argues, digital satire is a

unique type of hybrid alternative media that can articulate nonpartisan

interpretations of reality while also questioning, deconstructing, and

subverting the authoritative role of media. Satiric voices can offer an

informed, reflexive, argumentative, or historically rooted perspective

that amplifies public discourse and shapes changing notions of

journalism and political communication in democratic societies.



A

volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in

Latin/o America, edited by H?ctor Fern?ndez L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos

Rodr?guez



Publication of this work made possible by a

Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from

the National Endowment for the Humanities.