In a global context marked by deepening inequalities, the consolidation of authoritarian neoliberalism (Bruff and Tansel, 2019) and the accelerated platformization of production processes (Parikka, 2021; Srnicek), and social and cultural practices, whose impacts in Latin American and Caribbean countries have been at the center of research and intervention agendas in the region in recent years, the Political Economy of Information, Communication and Culture (PEC) presents itself as a field of critical reflection with great potential to analyze and propose transformative alternatives to these new logics that structure contemporary societies.

Processes such as the datafication of the public sphere, data mining, and the deployment of algorithmic systems under global corporate control are shaping a scenario that not only redefines social relations but also intensifies processes of private appropriation of socially produced knowledge, dependency, and digital colonialism in the Global South. In response, this Working Group aims to consolidate a situated agenda capable of articulating academic research and social advocacy in defense of a new, ethical, inclusive, and democratic communication order.

Research in the Political Economy of Information, Communication, and Culture (PEC) 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 six years by the EPICC Working Group and is part of a tradition of Latin American critical thought, which we trace back, initially, to the production of three books published by CLACSO—including an extensive anthology from the formative period of EPC in the 1970s and 1980s—and two dossiers published in the journal EPTIC (Brazil) and in Avatares de la Comunicación (Argentina), as can be verified in the report on the group's first three years.

In the second three-year period, these efforts continued with the creation of the newsletter Contra Senso, which published three issues, as well as the book Political Economy and Culture: The Battle for Communication in 21st-Century Latin America, by César Bolaño, published by CLACSO and Ciespal. This book was conceived with the didactic purpose of supporting the training of researchers in this field. During this period, priority was given to collaboration with other working groups and institutions in the field. For example, a panel was organized at the 2024 IAMCR congress, which led to a dialogue with the editors of the journal Platform and Society. This dialogue was supported by the Observatory of Economics and Communication (OBSCOM) and the Center for Studies of the Political Economy of Communication and Culture (CEPOS) at the Federal University of Sergipe, which conducts significant research on the regulation of platforms. As a result, we are currently editing a dossier for this publication. These activities are among those described in the report for the last three years.

The relationship with other Working Groups has been developed from the beginning, prioritizing the organization of panels at the CLACSO meetings in Mexico and Bogotá, especially (but not exclusively) with other groups dedicated to communication. This culminated in the establishment, in 2025, of the Democratic Communications Network in Bogotá, with the participation of the Working Groups on Appropriation of Digital Technologies and Intersectionality and Communication, Culture, and Politics, as well as other relevant institutions such as Citizen Internet. The current proposal is to continue along these lines of collaboration through the organization of seminars and in-person and virtual events, the publication of the newsletter, and other editorial initiatives. In addition to the groups with which we are already collaborating, we are proposing, following the renewal of our structure, to organize at least one seminar and potential publications in their respective newsletters with the Working Group on Crisis and the World Economy and with the Latin American Society of Political Economy and Critical Thought (SEPLA).

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, recovering the historical and scientific legacy of the productive Latin American school (Monje, 2019), whose genesis is clearly explained in the aforementioned Anthology and which remains very active at the Latin American and global levels, and, at this moment, very evident in the social sciences, given the central role that information and communication have assumed in the structure of capitalism with digital platforms and the expansion of artificial intelligence systems. 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 the emerging democratic alternatives for progress that must be considered geopolitically using new analytical frameworks and tools (Parikka, 2021; Zuboff, 2020). The lines of work defined during the group's second three-year existence are:

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.

For the third three-year period, a reconsideration and adjustment (possibly a reduction in number) of these lines of inquiry is planned. This work will be carried out collectively in specific virtual seminars, with the participation of the entire group. In any case, around these lines of research—the connection between cultural and communicative, technological and economic, and political-informational and techno-aesthetic aspects that underlie the Latin American EPC analysis model—we seek to define the theoretical and analytical framework for a comprehensive understanding of the interrelationship between the different levels of action. This framework aims to reveal both practical problems and the current logic of disinformation, as substantive aspects of the models of ideological representation present in contemporary theoretical practice.

The Political Economy of Information, Communication and Culture (PEC) is a research tradition that today seems more than relevant for the analysis of the complex organizational logics of the so-called Information and/or Knowledge Society insofar as it connects or relinks the historical and social with the domination of nature, when it comes to understanding the concrete social practices and logics that underlie the forms of contemporary development of the so-called innovation economy.

The Political Economy of Information, Communication, and Culture (PEICC) analyzes how communication and culture participate in the process of capital accumulation. This encompasses various issues 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). Precursor contributions to EPC can be found from the 1960s onwards, in the works of authors such as Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Nicholas Garnham, Graham Murdock, Peter Golding, Bernard Miège, Patrice Flichy, Dominique Leroy (Herscovici et al. 1999:12).

In Latin America, since the 1970s and 1980s, pioneering analyses can be found in authors such as Juan Dias Bordenave, Leonardo Acosta, Enrique Sanchez Ruiz, Roque Faraone, Armand Mattelart, Hector Schmucler, Ingrid Sarti, Heriberto Muraro, Margarita Graziano, Mario Kaplún, Soto Acosta, Sergio Capparelli, César Bolaño, Sergio Mattos, Patricia Arriaga, Maria Arminda Nascimento Arruda, Diego Portales, Javier Esteinou Madrid, Adorfo Zinser, Othon Jambeiro, Alvaro Portillo, to cite only those who made up the Anthology produced by the EPICC/CLACSO group (Bolaño et al, 2022), all descendants of Latin American historical structuralism, of authors such as Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado, Rui Mauro Marini and so many others who form the genesis of Latin American critical thought of the 20th century. The exchange with the authors from the north, referred to in the previous paragraph, is old.

Thus, for example, in opposition to positivist behaviorism and Althusserian definitions of the ideological state apparatuses, Herbert Schiller's early work was inspired by Freire's philosophy, specifically his 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. Meanwhile, North American researchers set out to examine how the media functioned in relation to macroeconomics and its connection to other institutions of 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.

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. In France, a line of research developed around the Groupe de Recherches sur les Enjeux de la Communication (GRESEC), founded in 1978 by Bernard Miège and Yves de la Haye. The Parisian Patrice Flichy was also part of this group. But before them, the classic works of Dominique Leroy, now rarely cited, and Jacques Attali, still highly influential in the field of music, were already circulating. Bolaño (2000) classifies the work of Spaniards, such as Enrique Bustamante and Ramón Zallo, as belonging to the second generation of that French school. He also classifies the work of Alain Herscovici and the Canadians of the Quebec school, such as Gaëtan Tremblay and his colleagues, in this way, while Mosco descends more directly from the Anglo-Saxon field. Here, we should also mention the Italian authors, such as Giovanni Cesareo, Richeri, and Pilatti, who apparently did not form a school of their own, but are part of the broader European contributions to the field.

The influence of these schools of thought within the EPICC (Educational Political Science) in Latin America has been very limited. Only after the 1992 IAMCR congress in Brazil did a degree of unification begin to occur in this field, which eventually became known as EPICC, following the Anglo-Saxon nomenclature. However, even today, these are distinct schools with diverse influences, generally arising separately and responding to their own needs, based on local political and intellectual debates. Latin America, in particular, has its own history, as is clear from the materials published in the aforementioned Anthology produced by the EPICC/CLACSO group. The introduction explicitly outlines the specific characteristics, even national ones, of the field in different Latin American countries. Mexican EPICC, for example, is closer to the North American school, while in the rest of the continent, except for Brazil, Spanish influence, and consequently French influence (to which it is largely dependent), has grown since then. In recent years, French influence has tended to decline, itself being influenced by the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon approach.

Brazilian EPICC, for its part, continued to evolve autonomously from the mid-1980s onward, and from the early 90s, it engaged in critical dialogue with its French counterpart. Argentine EPICC, for example, is very active in receiving various influences, including Brazilian and, especially today, Spanish. It would not be unreasonable to adopt the working hypothesis that Latin American EPICC is currently guided by three key influences, broadly speaking, the Brazilian, Spanish, and Anglo-Saxon traditions, the latter being largely hegemonic worldwide. Of course, this hypothesis would need to be tested through research—which the EPICC group would be very interested in supporting—to map the state of the art internationally.

Although this is not an immediate objective of the EPICC group, its activities, and this proposal for continuity, can bring important elements for a greater understanding of the problem, by promoting (a) internal (Latin American) exchange through seminars and all kinds of academic dialogue and publication initiatives at different levels, including interdisciplinary dialogue on the central themes of EPICC and (b) international dialogue through meetings and publications, as has already been developing so far, with the support of CLACSO and other institutions that the group has been able to bring together.

Contemporary studies of EPICC in Latin America have generated a new agenda of problems and theoretical-methodological approaches. This new agenda includes phenomena such as: the participation of converging technologies in regulatory and productive environments associated with Communication and Telecommunications Services, and the management and use of public resources and goods within the framework of radio spectrum administration.