Date: Friday, November 14, 2014. 1:15 PM.
Location: Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
This project is located in the intersection of Law and Political Science, touching on issues of Democracy and Freedom of Expression. More specifically, the project consists of an empirical study on state-censorship of the press and of dissenting voices in Venezuela, through the use of retaliation measures against the press.  Venezuela is used as a quintessential example of a ‘competitive authoritarian regime’. In this regard, the scholarship on the topic argues that in these regimes, because they use ‘democracy as deceit’, censorship measures are more subtle, nuanced and sophisticated -although equally systematic and pervasive- than those used in full authoritarian regimes, and are typically combined with ‘legal repression’.  However, to this date, there has not been an empirical study testing said theory by analyzing the general situation of the press in one of these regimes with a holistic approach.  Therefore, the question of how State-censorship operates in these regimes vis-à -vis the press has been practically ignored by the scholarship.  My research aims at contributing to fill said gap and test the theory, while shedding some light into the inner-workings of competitive authoritarian regimes and their relations with the press.  The goal of my dissertation is to use Venezuela as a case study of said theory, by documenting and describing how the authorities have censored the press in the last 15 years.  The data will consist of interviews with stakeholders, including journalists, civil society leaders and media owners, and content analysis of news coverage. Speaker: Ana Cristina Nuñez, Doctoral Candidate, Stanford Law School.
Location: Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row
This project is located in the intersection of Law and Political Science, touching on issues of Democracy and Freedom of Expression. More specifically, the project consists of an empirical study on state-censorship of the press and of dissenting voices in Venezuela, through the use of retaliation measures against the press.  Venezuela is used as a quintessential example of a ‘competitive authoritarian regime’. In this regard, the scholarship on the topic argues that in these regimes, because they use ‘democracy as deceit’, censorship measures are more subtle, nuanced and sophisticated -although equally systematic and pervasive- than those used in full authoritarian regimes, and are typically combined with ‘legal repression’.  However, to this date, there has not been an empirical study testing said theory by analyzing the general situation of the press in one of these regimes with a holistic approach.  Therefore, the question of how State-censorship operates in these regimes vis-à -vis the press has been practically ignored by the scholarship.  My research aims at contributing to fill said gap and test the theory, while shedding some light into the inner-workings of competitive authoritarian regimes and their relations with the press.  The goal of my dissertation is to use Venezuela as a case study of said theory, by documenting and describing how the authorities have censored the press in the last 15 years.  The data will consist of interviews with stakeholders, including journalists, civil society leaders and media owners, and content analysis of news coverage. Speaker: Ana Cristina Nuñez, Doctoral Candidate, Stanford Law School.