Media, State and Society in Bahia, Brazil

In this paper, I seek to assess the role of the media in ongoing subnational democratization processes from a State-in-society perspective. I use the case of Bahia, a state in North-Eastern Brazil, to assess ownership and social access to the media, the media’s autonomy from both the State and social actors as well as how conflicts between public interest and private profit are solved. We will thus understand the role of subnational media in sustaining pluralism and in providing independent sources of information, two critical dimensions of democracy.