Browsing by Author "Groshek, Jacob"

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    A Latin Spring? Examining digital diffusion and youth bulges in forecasting political change in Latin America
    (Routledge, 2014) Bachmann C., Ingrid; Groshek, Jacob; Brewer, Anita; Welp, Yanina
    The story is quite different in the countries that experienced the Arab Spring, where autocratic governments were still the rule in the twenty-first century. Arguably, shifts in democratic countries would be more likely to be measured rather than major revolutions like the ones that ended up ousting Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia. Conventional wisdom suggests that mass media and media diffusion are important for public deliberation, and play an important role fostering and maintaining democracy and stable societies. Research from political science and mass communication stresses the democratizing role of media. Indeed, in the last decades both neoliberal economics and populist politics have coexisted in several Latin American countries, for both left- and right-leaning governments. On the whole, the region has gone through overall economic stabilization, although political conflicts related to poorly distributed income, high unemployment, and lack of opportunities for young and indigenous people persist in most of the countries.