Regional organizations and cultural diversity: EU audiovisual diplomacy towards Mercosur in the shadow of Hollywood and the intergovernmentalism

Abstract

The aim of the article is double: on the one hand, to explore the EU’s ability to conduct a foreign audiovisual policy towards the Mercosur region and to promote the norms of the Convention on diversity of cultural expressions; on the other hand, to analyze the impact of the EU audiovisual policy model on the development of the Mercosur audiovisual cooperation and to focus on the main forces shaping the Mercosur audiovisual landscape. The article seeks to emphasize why and how the EU pursues an audiovisual foreign policy towards the Mercosur region, for which purposes as well as to highlight the resistances. In this sense, it is more concerned with understanding how the EU’s audiovisual diplomacy interplays with other main factors, such as the governmental action, namely the EU and Mercosur members’ audiovisual diplomacy and the practices of private sector (Hollywood and big media conglomerates).