Digital Dilemmas

The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba

By Cristina Venegas

SERIES: New Directions in International Studies

Rutgers University Press

The contentious debate in Cuba over Internet use and digital media primarily focuses on three issuesùmaximizing the potential for economic and cultural development, establishing stronger ties to the outside world, and changing the hierarchy of control. A growing number of users decry censorship and insist on personal freedom in accessing the web, while the centrally managed system benefits the government in circumventing U.S. sanctions against the country and in controlling what limited capacity exists.

Digital Dilemmas views Cuba from the Soviet Union's demise to the present, to assess how conflicts over media access play out in their both liberating and repressive potential. Drawing on extensive scholarship and interviews, Cristina Venegas questions myths of how Internet use necessarily fosters global democracy and reveals the impact of new technologies on the country's governance and culture. She includes film in the context of broader media history, as well as artistic practices such as digital art and networks of diasporic communities connected by the Web. This book is a model for understanding the geopolitic location of power relations in the age of digital information sharing.

Cristina Venegas's well-researched and highly original work brings to the forefront an important and under-researched topic. Yiedy Rivero, author of Tuning Out Blackness

This book will make an important contribution both to Cuban studies and to Hispanic media studies. Marvin D'Lugo, Clark University

A nuanced analysis based on careful research and firsthand experience. This work will benefit readers interested in Cuba's recent transformation and also those seeking to understand the emergence of new media in Latin America and the challenges digital culture poses. Highly recommended. Choice

Cristina Venegas's well-researched and highly original work brings to the forefront an important and under-researched topic. Yiedy Rivero, author of Tuning Out Blackness

This book will make an important contribution both to Cuban studies and to Hispanic media studies. Marvin D'Lugo, Clark University

A nuanced analysis based on careful research and firsthand experience. This work will benefit readers interested in Cuba's recent transformation and also those seeking to understand the emergence of new media in Latin America and the challenges digital culture poses. Highly recommended. Choice

Cristina Venegas is an associate professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

List of Illustrations
List of Acronyms
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Inventing, Recycling, and Deploying Technologies
2 Media Technologies and "Cuban Democracy"
3 Tourism and the Social Ramifications of 3 Media Technologies
4 Film Culture in the Digital Millennium
5 Digital Communities and the Pleasures of Technology
Conclusion

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