Revista Enfoques (Dec 2006)
Prensa chilena y ecología política en el Chile democrático. La miopía de la contaminación ambiental
Abstract
The political topics in the contemporary Chile have been related with the successful economical model, democratic transition, human rights, and, in a lesser extent, the deterioration of the environment. This article has the purpose to explain why today ecological issues are reduced to the atmospheric pollution in Santiago, Chile. In this sense, we maintain the hypothesis that ecologicy press has been focused in only one of the many environmental conflicts: the atmospheric pollution. This situation has influenced the construction both of a reductionist and instrumental perspective related to environmental and ecological topics and the development of low impact public policies in order to solve the various ecological problems within a democratic regime. This has been possible because part of the Chilean public sphere, in this case the mass media, is dominated by an instrumental rationality due to the free-trade development model deployed in Chile. In this sense, we observe the emergency of counter-publics that, through the employment of new technologies, intend to «broadcast» the principles of the environmental ecology awareness along with an ethical and social redefinition that goes beyond the logic of free trade.
