Research in the Political Economy of Information, Communication, and Culture (EPICC) contributes fundamental elements of analysis to critical thinking in communication regarding the dialectic of access to and control of information in our Latin American democracies. This proposal continues the work sustained for three years by the EPICC Working Group and is part of a tradition of Latin American critical thought, which we demonstrate through the production of three books published in the CLACSO Working Groups collection and two dossiers published in the EPICC Journal and the Avatares de la Comunicación Journal. Namely:

- (Un)equal and (Dis)connected Policies, actors and info-communicational dilemmas in Latin America (2021) Daniela Monje coordinator.

- Cultural Studies, Political Economy of Communication and the Brazilian Television Market. Valério Cruz Brittos. (Author) César Bolaño. (Presentation) 2022.

- Background of the political economy of communication and culture in Latin America (1970s and 1980s) 2022

- Dossier: Geopolitics of Communications: Scenarios, Actors and Disputed Interests in the Reconfiguration of Power 2022

- Dossier: Platforms, State and Citizenship: New work processes, regulations and value creation in the information, communication and culture economy 2022.

From the McBride Report to the Porto Alegre Forum, or the Internet Social Forum, scholars, communicators and social liberation movements have been demanding another structure of communication based on the analysis of political economy and the contribution of materialist knowledge in communication to the social appropriation of new technologies and information systems.

This Working Group aims to continue working on the articulation, grouping, and promotion of economic-political studies and critical mediation theory (Sierra Caballero, 2020), recovering the historical and scientific legacy of the productive Latin American school (Muraro, 1974; Monje, 2019). In this endeavor, a proposal is presented, directed both to the academic community and to social movements and collectives advocating for a new information order in times of platformization and algorithms (Srnicek, 2018).

True to its tradition of uniting wills and coordinating critical-reflective efforts in the field of communication and culture, the EPICC Working Group aims, in short, to account for the most advanced thinking on the subject, in order to formulate a well-founded theoretical critique, as well as innovative analyses of emerging democratic alternatives for progress that must be considered geopolitically using new analytical frameworks and tools (Parikka, 2021; Zuboff, 2020). The Working Group's activities will be organized along the following lines of work:

I. EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORY OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION.

II. OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE AND COMMUNICATION POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA.

III. SOCIAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION.

IV. GEOPOLITICS AND THE GEOLOGY OF INFORMATION.

V. PLATFORM CAPITALISM AND REGIONAL ALTERNATIVES.

VI. CONNECTIVITY AND ICTs IN LATIN AMERICA.

VII. CYBERACTIVISM AND EMERGING COMMUNICATION IN DIGITAL CULTURE

VIII.- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND COLONIALISM.

Around these lines of research, the connection between the cultural and communicative, technological and economic, and political-informational and techno-aesthetic aspects that are at the base of the EPICC analysis model, we will seek to define a logical framework for a global understanding of the interrelationship existing between the different levels of action, which will be revealing both the problems of a practical order and the disinformation logic of post-truth, as substantive aspects of the models of ideological representation present in contemporary theoretical practice.

The Political Economy of Information, Communication, and Culture (PEICC) is a research tradition that today seems more relevant than ever for analyzing the complex organizational logics of the so-called Information and/or Knowledge Society. It connects or reconnects the historical and social with the domination of nature in order to understand the concrete social practices and logics that underlie contemporary development models of the so-called innovation economy. Its studies highlight the increasing colonization processes that constitute surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2013). While neoliberalism operates on the principle of moral and intellectual isolation and disconnection, PEICC aims to connect agents, institutions, communities of readers, political and social movements, and critical communication theory in the present and for the future.

The epistemological struggle to reconfigure the critical field of communication, in the current historical process, involves defining the cognitive horizon of the new digital society and the centrality of the struggle for the code in the new form of capital reproduction.

Since the mid-60s, critical thinking in communication has sought to deconstruct the neocolonial process of the cultural industries and Western functionalist theory, hybridizing, rereading, and rewriting history and thought from its topology and lifeworlds.

The field of study of the EPICC in Latin America constructs a dense network based on the reflections, categories, and analyses produced by intellectuals such as Juan Somavia, Luis Ramiro Beltrán, Antonio Pasquali, Rafael Roncagliolo, Margarita Graziano, Héctor Schmucler, Diego Portales, Fernando Reyes Matta, Raquel Salinas Bascur, Elizabeth Fox, Mabel Piccini, Gonzaga Motta, and Nelly Camargo, among others, in ongoing dialogue and collaboration with European and North American colleagues such as Cees Hamelink, Armand Mattelart, Michel Mattelart, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and Herbert Schiller. Numerous colleagues from the Global South and North America, on both sides of the Atlantic, continue this exchange (Herscovici, 1999; Monje, 2019). Latin American EPICC is part of this history, and of the history of Marxist and critical thought on the continent (Bolaño, 1988). The research methods are influenced by the dialectical logic of classical Marxism, particularly by the critique of political economy, as well as by economics, political science, and the social sciences in general, always in dialogue with the methodologies adopted in other sub-fields of Communication.

During the last fifteen years of the 20th century, even though the international debate had matured significantly, potentially leading to the transformation of the concentration and dependency situations being denounced, EPICC studies were marginalized from academic agendas and debates in international organizations. The first decades of the 21st century, for their part, proved highly challenging in terms of diagnosis and agenda-setting. The advance of transnational capitalism in communications, the increasing platformization of content and its integration into social communication processes, and the new value chains linked to data mining and Artificial Intelligence designs under the control of global corporations, currently challenge existing analyses and demand an update to our problem agendas.

Critical theory of society is only justified today if it is capable of bringing to light, and questioning, the theoretical and ideological presuppositions of the dominant system of relations and, thereby, illuminating the necessary steps for the emancipation of those who suffer the most perverse and exploitative effects of that system? (Herrera, 2005: 177). Therefore, developing a political and academic agenda in terms of public and common goods is our challenge and commitment to the future.

The Political Economy of Information, Communication, and Culture (PEICC) analyzes how communication and culture participate in the process of capital accumulation. This encompasses various problems related to the role of the media in this process, the power relations expressed within the cultural system in the context of the increasing integration of mass media into the economic structure, class stratification and inequalities, the conditions of production, distribution, and exchange of cultural industries, and the relationships between centers of political and economic power. In short, it considers social classes, the media, the relationship between material and intellectual production, and communication policies (Herscovici et al., 1999). Vincent Mosco has defined PEICC as "the study of social relations, especially power relations, that constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources" (Bolaño, 2007). The initial contributions of EPICC to the field of communication were made in the 60s by two research groups: one of North American origin started by Dallas Smythe and Herbert Schiller following the tradition of Paul Baran and Paul Marlor Sweezy, the other made up of the research of the British Nicholas Garnham, Graham Murdock and Peter Golding and the French Bernard Miège, Patrice Flichy and Dominique Leroy (Herscovici et al. 1999:12).

American researchers set out to examine how the media functioned in relation to macroeconomics and its connection to other institutions within the capitalist system. Their analyses were not strictly economic, but rather sought to establish relationships between the economic and ideological dimensions of the media, highlighting their place within the framework of the international economic structure. Against positivist behaviorism and Althusserian definitions of the ideological apparatuses of the state, Herbert Schiller's early work was inspired by Freire's philosophy, as seen in *Pedagogy of the Oppressed* (1970). In 1974, following Paulo Freire, he argued that "the manipulation of human minds is an instrument of conquest" and that mass media possess the power to carry it out.

Around the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, Graham Murdock and Peter Golding published *For a Political Economy of Mass Communications* (1974) in England, where they argued for the need to consider the interrelationships between the ideological, economic, and political dimensions. They pointed out that there are two reasons why the media are important in people's lives: 1) they provide a way for them to occupy much of their free time, and 2) they are the primary source of information and explanation of social and political processes. A third line of thought emerged around the Groupe de Recherches sur les Enjeux de la Communication (GRESEC), founded in 1978 by the French economists Bernard Miège and Yves de la Haye. Patrice Flichy and Dominique Leroy, who were also part of this group, dedicated themselves to a more precise empirical analysis of the economics of the media, thus moving away from formulations that emphasized ideology or institutions. Their specifications regarding the different forms of cultural work and the valuation of cultural products are noteworthy. The more recent work of the Spanish researchers Enrique Bustamante and Ramón Zallo, and the Canadian Vincent Mosco, also falls within this framework. In Latin America, the influences of these schools have been diverse.

The Mexican EPICC has a closer relationship with the North American school, while in the rest of the continent, except in Brazil, the Spanish influence - and with it the French influence of which it is largely subsidiary - has grown in the more recent past.

French influence, from the 1990s onward, is also significant throughout the continent. For its part, the Brazilian EPICC (International School of Contemporary Art) exhibited an autonomous evolution from the mid-1980s and, from the early 90s, engaged in critical dialogue with the French school, while the Argentine school, for example, is very active in receiving different influences, including Brazilian and especially, today, Spanish.

Contemporary studies of EPICC in Latin America produce a new agenda of problems and theoretical-methodological approaches.

On the one hand, specific theoretical categories are being designed to interpret the region's problems in a situated manner. On the other hand, the research agenda from the EPICC perspective is expanding to include the analysis of phenomena such as: the participation of convergent technologies in regulatory and productive environments associated with Communication and Telecommunications Services; the management and use of public resources and goods within the framework of radio spectrum administration (MOM/RSP, 2019); the use and appropriation of information by platforms; and the reconfiguration of markets and business models. internet economy (Srnicek, 2018), governance, citizen access to universal goods and services (Monje, 2018), new rights linked to privacy, data management and freedom of expression on the internet (Baladrón, 2018; Beltramelli, 2018; De Charras and Lozano, 2019; Gerber, Brant and Mastrini, 2017; Ramos, 2014; Segura and Waisbord, 2016)

In this line we consider that the technological changes associated with digitization and datafication produce alterations in the efficiency of legal or regulatory designs (Rossi, 2018), adding complexity and hybridity to the reconfiguration of markets (Baladrón and Rivero, 2019), and proposing new relationships of use, appropriation, production and circulation of content and services to citizens (De Charras and Galup 2018; Saladrigas, Oliveira and Paz, 2017; Becerra, 2015). As the reader will be able to gather from the review of the specific literature on the subject, from the point of view of the material object, the formalization of the field of study transcends, in recent years with the fourth industrial revolution (Parikka, 2021), the problem of reproduction and the economics of development, in a classical sense, by understanding, in its complex articulation, multiple elements that, today, affect, as we will see, the model of integration and development, problematizing, among other processes, labor relations and the very organization of the cultural capital of a given society or community, cultural rights (Herrera, 2005) and common heritage, the management of knowledge and territory in relation to local culture, the productive function of the so-called quaternary sector and the aggregating role of the immaterial economy, the aesthetics and design of the production of space and the expansion of consumption, and even industrial policy and technological development in technopoles and cultural clusters.

Considering the complex reality and multiple dimensions of the new logic of transformation of territories and immaterial economies, the EPICC provides an institutional analysis of the forms of convergence and articulation between the cultural industries sector, the processes of economic and social development and public policies, analyzing the power of mediation and the technological vector as a powerful determining process in contemporary forms of representation and production of the imaginary.