Abstract

PUYOSA, Iria Puyosa  and  CHAGUACEDA, Armando. Five political regimes in Latin America, Internet freedom and mechanisms of control. Retos [online]. 2017, vol.7, n.14, pp.11-37. ISSN 1390-8618.  https://doi.org/10.17163/ret.n14.2017.01.

Since 2010, there has been a trend towards establishing internet control and securitization policies (Freedom House, 2016). The literature on the subject indicates that the mechanisms of internet control vary according to the type of political regimes. The objective of this work is to verify if the policies of control of Internet in Latin America vary according to the type of prevailing political regime. For the study were selected five Latin American countries that are categorized as examples of different political regimes: Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba. For each case, the indicators related to freedom of expression on the internet are reported in accordance with the data provided by «Varieties of Democracy». «Freedom on the Net» categorizations are used as a complement. The results indicate that there is a correlation between political regime (measured by polyarchy index) and internet freedom. Indeed the more autocratic the regime is, the more first-generation internet controls are observed, with censorship of contents and violations of users’ rights. While in hybrid regimes second-generation controls are more commonly observed, which involve obstacles to access, without reaching content blocking and network outages.

Keywords : Political regimes; internet; control policies; democracy; authoritarianism; censorship; rights of internet users.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )