Information Society in Argentina: A political economy approach

The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of the Information Society project in Argentina, by exploring the policies developed by the State and the main actors and players of the information and communication activities in the last 25 years. The Information Society is a project that, developed basically in the industrialised and central countries, focuses on the leading role of the information and recognises the protagonism of the information and communication technologies (info-communication technologies) in the structuring of contemporary societies. As they are productive formulas, info-communication technologies seek to support the policies of economic growth, although this growth not always goes hand in hand whit improvement in social welfare. In countries where the cohesion has not been included in the governmental agenda, as the case of Argentina, the presence of the info-communication technologies supported by the Information Society project articulates with an increasing regressive income distribution. The subordination of the info-communicational activities to the market economy logic tends to reinforce the presence of the great operators of the sector (concentrated and centralised) and to waken the users ` rights. The Argentine case could be considered as an archetype, in this sense, as the national government backs the strongest player´s interest that makes it possible to observe how a market without regulations operates. The effects of the wild application of the market law in Argentina could also be seen in the socio-economic crisis that it is undergoing since 2001 and 2002