Digital Satire in Latin America

How creators of online video critique politics and society and amplify public discourse in Latin American countries

This book analyzes how digital-native audiovisual satire has become increasingly influential in national public debates within Latin America. Paul Alonso illuminates the role of online video in filling gaps in sociopolitical critique left by television, traditional journalism, and commercial entertainment while exposing some of the prevalent tensions of the region.

Alonso draws on interviews and analyzes media content to consider some of the most representative and influential satirical shows born on the internet and produced in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and Latinx communities in the United States. He discusses YouTubers Chumel Torres, Malena Pichot, Guille Aquino, Joanna Hausmann, and El Cacash; the Enchufe.tv collective; and the video columnists Maria Paulina Baena from La Pulla and Mariángela Urbina from Las Igualadas. These creators use professional and non-mainstream practices and resources to dismantle fake news, highlight social tensions, and offer in-depth content that goes beyond confrontational attacks.

In contexts of highly ideological polarization, Alonso argues, digital satire is a unique type of hybrid alternative media that can articulate nonpartisan interpretations of reality while also questioning, deconstructing, and subverting the authoritative role of media. Satiric voices can offer an informed, reflexive, argumentative, or historically rooted perspective that amplifies public discourse and shapes changing notions of journalism and political communication in democratic societies.

Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.