Latin America Now: Democracy and Media in Latin America
Explores contemporary Latin American democracy, focusing on political institutions, legitimacy, and how media systems, journalism, and digital platforms shape public life, trust, and civic participation.
Summary
What you’ll be able to do
Analyze how media systems shape democratic politics and public life in Latin America through sustained engagement with course readings and case studies.
Compare contemporary democratic challenges across Latin American countries, including polarization, corruption, violence, inequality, and contested legitimacy.
Evaluate competing narratives about democracy and citizenship by assessing claims, evidence, and discourse strategies across media and scholarly sources.
Analyze classic and emerging scholarship on democracy and media in Latin America by interrogating key concepts, assumptions, and implications.
Compare theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches used to study mediated democracy, including political communication, discourse analysis, and digital media research.
Evaluate scholarly arguments by assessing conceptual coherence, evidence standards, and methodological rigor in comparative research on the region.
Design research or policy oriented project on democracy and media in Latin America that contributes to academic and professional debates in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Apply key concepts from political communication and media studies to interpret cases such as elections, protests, political leadership, and platform based public debate.
Source: UW Guide
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Prerequisites
Course mapSophomore standing
- Sophomore standing
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Prerequisite text tree
- Sophomore standing
Professors
Spring 2027No instructors recorded for this selection.
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Student experience
the class
In depth exploration of contemporary democracy in Latin America with emphasis on political institutions, democratic legitimacy, and the role of media systems in shaping public life. Examines how citizenship, political identities, and public trust are influenced by journalism, television, and digital platforms, with attention to campaign communication, mediated public debate, polarization, populist discourse, and the circulation of disinformation. Emphasizes interdisciplinary analysis of key regional challenges including inequality, corruption, violence, migration, and human rights, highlighting how these dynamics affect governance, elections, accountability, and civic participation. Focuses on critical engagement with classic and emerging scholarship and on the application of conceptual tools to interpret democratic conflict, crisis, and resilience across the region.
difficulty & workload
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Topics
- Regional challenges: inequality, corruption, violence, migration, and human rights
- Media's influence on citizenship, identity, and public trust
- Scholarship on democratic conflict, crisis, and resilience
Skills
- Analyze how media systems shape democratic politics and public life
- Compare contemporary democratic challenges across Latin American countries
- Evaluate competing narratives about democracy and citizenship
- Compare theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches for studying mediated democracy
- Apply political communication and media studies concepts to interpret cases
Grades
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Catalog & offerings
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Explore recorded gradesRecorded 2026-10-14
Model outputs & technical records
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Model & dataset provenance
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