Hall of Mirrors: Media, Democratization, and the Public Sphere in MaranhAo, Brazil

Freedom of expression and access to diverse sources of information are seen as critical elements of democracy, although their concretization on the ground is subject to strong interference. Recent regime change in MaranhAo, one of Brazil's poorest states, has led to the emergence of new media and some expansion of the public sphere. The traditional oligarchy continues to dominate the media, however, and the opposition media replicate its exclusion of nonelite actors. The MaranhAo experience confirms that normative approaches to the media either as automatic contributors to democracy or as instruments of elite manipulation have little value for understanding media dynamics.