Transforming Crises Into Opportunities: Self-Managed Media in Argentina

Abstract

The current situation for journalism in Argentina represents a great challenge due to the continuous economic changes linked to inflation and labour precariousness. Faced with this, a phenomenon known as self-managed media has grown over the recent years, also connected to recovered media that promotes innovation, providing material for use in newsrooms to produce novel content and connect with audiences. For this explorative study, based on journalists' roles and innovation, we conducted a mixed-methods design to analyse self-managed media composed of recovered, cooperatives, community, popular, and alternative media. First, a focus group was held with 10 communicators to understand their current situation; second, 60 journalists were consulted about their roles and innovations; finally, in-depth interviews were conducted with three communicators who work on self-managed media at the Community and Cooperative Media Confederation. The findings reveal the presence of innovative actions, reported by 90% of respondents, and confirm that 70% of the consulted journalists had assumed new roles in management and administration. In addition, 80% of the journalists praised community work as fostering a sense of belonging and its associated benefits regarding motivation and freedom. These sentiments were further validated by the insights shared by the three interviewees. This sense of belonging could be included in the fifth area of innovation in journalism, which centres on the social dimension.