Digital Political Journalism in Latin America. Case study: La Silla Vacía (Colombia), Animal Político (Mexico) and Agência Pública (Brazil)

This paper presents the key points of the analysis of three Latin American digital media: La Silla Vacía, Animal Político and Agência Pública, completed in 2015. The formats, contents and narratives were explored to characterize them as independent digital media, and observe how they transformed the practice of journalism in the region. The analysis allows to establish that there is at least one path (or a projection) for future journalism with “democratic” access conditions on the material scope, and “segmented” access conditions in the discourse. It is in addition, a path towards the multispecialization of contents and audiences that impact on the political and intellectual culture configuration. All this intersected by their relationship with the power to form public opinion and to monitor the transparency of democracy, as they themselves recognize it, it is a quality that weakens their “neutral” position. Finally, it is necessary to insist on the need to think about the directions to which the office is directed or should be directed to guarantee its action as a social service, considering media’s responsibility as “the fourth power”.