Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba (New Directions in International Studies) - Hardcover

Venegas, Cristina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813546869 ISBN 13: 9780813546865

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2009

Synopsis

The contentious debate in Cuba over Internet use and digital media primarily focuses on three issues - maximizing the potential for economic and cultural development, establishing stronger ties to the outside world, and changing the hierarchy of control. A growing number of users decry censorship and insist on personal freedom in accessing the web, while the centrally managed system benefits the government in circumventing U.S. sanctions against the country and in controlling what limited capacity exists. ""Digital Dilemmas"" views Cuba from the Soviet Union's demise to the present, to assess how conflicts over media access play out in their both liberating and repressive potential. Drawing on extensive scholarship and interviews, Cristina Venegas questions myths of how Internet use necessarily fosters global democracy and reveals the impact of new technologies on the country's governance and culture. She includes film in the context of broader media history, as well as artistic practices such as digital art and networks of diasporic communities connected by the Web. This book is a model for understanding the geopolitic location of power relations in the age of digital information sharing.

About this title

Review:

"Cristina Venegas's well-researched and highly original work brings to the forefront an important and under-researched topic."--Yiedy Rivero "author of Tuning Out Blackness "

"This book will make an important contribution both to Cuban studies and to Hispanic media studies."--Marvin D'Lugo "Clark University "

"A nuanced analysis based on careful research and firsthand experience. This work will benefit readers interested in Cuba's recent transformation and also those seeking to understand the emergence of new media in Latin America and the challenges digital culture poses. Highly recommended."--Choice

About the Author:

CRISTINA VENEGAS is an assistant professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0813546869
• ISBN 13: 9780813546865
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 229