The research focuses its object of study on the structure of the communication system established and developed in the Cuban context between 1959 and 2018, because with it a form of exercise of symbolic power is instituted. It is also interesting the ideological justification of this system and the normative discourse on the media, regulated in this period at the legislative, executive, political and union level.
In every society there are social actors who observe and interpret reality in line with their experiences, expectations and interests and, consequently, often try to make those own, partial visions prevail over those held by others, and even present themselves as the only ones possible. The media constitute one of the fundamental spaces where this struggle for the imposition of meaning to achieve or maintain social hegemony occurs. Hence, control over the communication system is relevant to influence public opinion. Situation that has also occurred in the Cuban case, where a symbolic elite has used the communication system to justify and maintain its hegemony.
This study responds to a methodological approach to a structural approach, which addresses the process of configuring power, in its direct or indirect relationship with the media. The practice of institutional analysis is chosen by focusing on the examination of relevant social institutions such as the media system and the normative system that supports and legitimizes it. The Critical Discourse Analysis is also assumed as a convenient research approach for the study of texts that for almost six decades constitute the institutional or legal basis for any additional action or decision making in the exercise of communicative power in Cuba.
The results reveal that in Cuba the reproduction of power has required the use of discourse genres such as politics, for the construction and preservation of the symbolic capital of the socialist system; and the normative, for the institutionalization of political decision making on communicative production contexts. In both cases, the symbolic elites that control public discourse establish an effective legitimation mechanism derived from the creation of a media structure related to the interests of the collective that holds power, and the development of a regulatory framework that, among other issues, conditions access and media content to the recognition of its ideology. This makes it difficult to involve other social actors with different visions of reality in these real production scenarios.
The conclusions lead us to raise some questions about the future of Cuban media institutions as a fundamental tool for the legitimation of power. And this, especially in the current circumstances, in which the development of digital communication on a global scale and, in particular, the growing internet access of the Cuban population, have favored the emergence of media and communication platforms whose forms of communication management, production, distribution and scope largely evade state control and, therefore, compete for the production of meaning and proposal of reality in communication practice.