Cuba: dodging media monopoly

Tuesday, February 19

While internet access is restricted in Cuba, electronic media are becoming increasingly important in challenging vertical state control of the media.

E-mail, which is far more accessible than the world wide web, has become a key form of horizontal communication, bypassing state media hierarchies. While dissidents for some time have sent articles to websites maintained in Miami and elsewhere, a new generation of blogs and magazines have generated a new dynamic:

• While hosted on servers outside Cuba, new websites like the irreverent Generation Y blog, or online magazine Consenso, are maintained from on the island.
• Vitral, a critical magazine, published under the auspices of Cuba's Catholic Church, was closed down last year, officially because of "lack of resources". Its director, Dagoberto Valdes, now has resurrected the project as a web-based magazine called "Convivencia".
• For official journalists and party functionaries, the left-wing Latin America-wide website Kaos en la Red has become a semi-official testing ground for opinion pieces that go beyond what is currently publishable in traditional media.