Communication system, power and socialism: The Cuban case

Abstract

The social sciences have coined a number of concepts and theories often elaborated from a critical perspective, that give account for the close relationships in contemporary societies between power and the media. However, studies that reveal these relations within the socialist countries are less frequent that, as any other society, they have certain groups that hold political and economic power, and act as symbolic elites. The difference often lies in the way in which these countries justify the use of the media, with strict ideological purposes, attributing the guidance of their communication system to the Communist Party, "the working class vanguard". This study provides a review of the Cuban case, from the description of its communicative structure and the analysis of the normative discourse that sustains it, from 1959 to 2018. Adopting a structural methodological approach, and from the research paradigm proposed by the critical analysis of discourse, it is noted that the symbolic elites that control public discourse in Cuba have instituted an effective mechanism of legitimation for almost six decades, supported by a media organization according to their interests, and in the development of a regulatory framework that conditions the access and content of the media to the recognition of their ideology. It is also observed that their forms of communicative production coexist and dialogue with a public communication model where a logic of sociocultural profitability prevails that marks a notable difference with other communication systems.