Global Digital Culture| Uploading the News after Coming Down from the Mountain: The Uploading the News After Coming Down From the Mountain: The FARC’s Experiment with Online Television in Cuba, 2012–2016

Alexander L. Fattal

Abstract


Between 2012 and 2016, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) negotiated a peace agreement with the Colombian government in Havana, Cuba. Over those four years, the group experimented with media production techniques to redefine itself and access new publics. Central to the FARC’s media operations was an online news program. This essay parses the aesthetics of that online broadcast and analyzes it within the context of a historic peace accord’s uncertain unfolding. The FARC, I argue, has been anticipating a Gramscian “war of position” in the post–peace accord period, girding itself for a mediated form of political contestation that will absorb and refashion the intensity and tactical patterns of the guerrilla conflict.


Keywords


Colombia, FARC, Cuba, social media, media warfare, post-conflict transition, political reintegration, Antonio Gramsci

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