Communication for a New World: Brazilian Perspectives

The Journal of International Communication
Published by Macquarie University Center for International Communication
www.music.mq.edu.au/JIC/

Book Reviews in Vol. 2 No. 2 (1995)
Jose Marques de Melo, Communication for a New World: Brazilian Perspectives

Jose Marques de Melo

Marques de Melo, Jose, ed. 1993. Communication for a New World: Brazilian Perspectives. Sao Paulo, Brazil: School of Communication and Arts, University of Sao Paulo. 383 pp.

Recent changes in Latin America, such as democratization, privatization and market integration, have stirred a great deal of interest among U. S. scholars. This interest is especially keen among communication scholars and media institutions eager for connections with Latin American scholars and universities. Unfortunately, little is known in the United States about Latin American mass media. Knowledge of its growing body of media scholarship is even more limited despite the very able efforts of Elizabeth Fox, Joseph Straubhaar and other U.S. scholars who have written amply on the subject.

Those familiar with Latin American mass media scholarship are aware of its scope and depth. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico, for example, have built an impressive research bibliography of the region's mass media over the past four decades. One can also find scholarly work on the history of mass media, media effects, class struggle and media, cultural imperialism and dependency, public opinion, and media and culture in almost every country of the region. Simply said, Latin Americans are fascinated with the mass media. Not surprisingly, few Latin American universities lack a department of communications, and school enrollments are at an all-time high.

Without a doubt, Brazil is, and has been for some time, the leading contributor to Latin American mass media scholarship. Its impressive television system, its sophisticated advertising industry and its vastly different publics have been fodder for Brazilian researchers since the 1950s. Some of Brazil's best works, and in fact of Latin America's, are those of Brazilian scholar Jos Marques de Melo, whose critical analyses of
media, public and culture are known around the world.

In _Communication for a New World_, Marques de Melo shares with us Brazil's rich mass media scholarship by putting together a diverse collection of works, presented at the 18th Conference of the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) in Sao Paulo in 1992 .

For those interested in present-day Brazilian mass media research thought, this book is an indispensable source of information. Its 30 essays, of which this review can mention only a few, include works on industry of culture, advertising, political communication, fictional genres, television and the child, Latin American movies, comparative television systems, Brazilian radio, Brazilian television, mass media and environment, AfricanÐ Brazilian identity and the press, the role of television in Brazilian society, and more. To be sure, these are only a sample of the vast wealth of mass media research that scholars are conducting in Brazil today, as de Melo himself points out in the preface.

These works reflect Brazilian mass media research's strengths and weaknesses, which one can generalize to the rest of Latin America. This book is an eye-opener to the uninitiated. He or she will discover that far from being provincial, Latin American, and especially Brazilian, researchers have a level of sophistication that rivals European scholarship. A review of Marxist, postmodernist and dependency theories might be helpful before sitting down to read this book.

Some of the book's best works include Cacilda Rego's "On Readers and Texts: Tracking the Routes of Cultural Studies." Rego's comparison of the European, North American and Latin American perspectives on cultural "artifacts" and "audiences" is at the core of current Latin American thinking. Rego explores the relationship that exists between media and audiences across cultures. This research tradition questions such conspiracy theories as dependency and class struggle in terms of communication and suggests that audiences assign meaning to the message irrespective of institutional or governmental interventions. Thus, for example, the immense popularity of MTV in Latin America has less to do with American "imperialism" and everything to do with message appeal across cultures. It makes more sense to talk about the culture of the message than about the message as the medium. Rego, who is well versed in the research literature of the three continents, makes insightful comparisons across cultures. Simes Borelli's "Fictional Genres in Mass Culture" and Maria Aparecida Baccega's "Verbal Language and Mass Media" do an excellent elaboration on this theory as well.

Those interested in the history of Brazilian radio, television and advertising will find adequate information in Moreira's "Radio in Brazil," Mattos' "A Profile of Brazilian Television" and Durand's "The Field of Advertising in Brazil, 1930-1991." Those interested in communications' theses and dissertations will find Vassallo de Lopes's "Communication Research in Brazil" equally informative.

No volume on Latin American mass media is complete without a study of media and politics. Since the return of democracy to several Latin American countries, researchers have focused on the role of the media in shaping public opinion against the old dictators. During the last decade, "El marketing," "strategic planning" and "focus groups" have become part of the region's political vocabulary. Fernandes' "New Dimension in Political Communication," which puts a lot of stock on the power of the media, gives us a glimpse of the Brazilian approach to propaganda research and elaborates on the appeal of strategic planning to Brazilian politicians.

Marques de Melo's _Communication for a New World_ does a good job at presenting the scope and depth of contemporary Brazilian mass communication research. But it also reveals its weaknesses. Generally, Latin American empirical research lacks rigor, when it is not mishandled altogether. In this book, readers will find several works in which the authors have used survey techniques improperly and where the authors have reported the results inadequately. The reader will also have to get through some rough passages, improper grammar, faulty editing and inconsistent citation styles, which may be due to problems in translation from Portuguese into English.

But for anyone who wants to learn more about Latin American mass media scholarship, this book is a must.

Gonzalo Soruco, associate professor
School of Communication
University of Miami