The final speakers in this session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town are Rodrigo Seroubian and Belén Sosa, whose focus is on Uruguay. In particular, they focus on the subnational level: while Uruguay’s democracy is strong at the national level, below that level there are certain problematic dynamics, and this impacts on the capacity of citizens to form critical opinions.
This focusses on self-censorship as the voluntary withholding of information by journalists, but not as the result of violence, threats, or harassment, but through invisible omissions. Such self-censorship is not spontaneous: it reflects certain structural issues and the effects of government communication strategies.
It results, for instance, from structural dependence on government advertising, the ownership structures and networks of media companies, and media concentration in smaller local media markets. Structural dependence is a sufficient condition for self-censorship, even in the absence of direct threats of violence.
Uruguay is interesting here, because it is one of the most stable Latin American democracies, with civil and press freedom, competitive elections, and an absence of violent threats against journalists. This project conducted some 47 interviews with journalists, editors, and political actors in the Maldonado and Cerro Largo regions, which have diverse socioeconomic structures.
Advertising emerged as the critical driver of self-censorship here; for one outlet in Maldonado, for instance, 80% of advertising income came from the local government. This dependence results in considerable self-censorship of potentially critical coverage of government actions. Journalists sometimes are contacted directly by politicians following critical stories, raising such threats.
Some journalists also work for local governments, creating conflicts of interest through such dual roles. This provides direct government access and a steady stream of content, but also results in government PR being presented as news. This reduces the independence of journalism. Conversely, there are also informal blacklists of journalists who are excluded from access to government sources.
This means that there is no need for explicit censorship to induce journalistic silence. All that is needed is a media-environmental configuration where sanctions are plausible and would have high impact on journalistic organisations. Such configurations appear especially likely to emerge at the subnational level, in Uruguay and perhaps also elsewhere.
