Translucent States: Political Mediation of E-Transparency1

This work focuses on online state communication through the analysis of Latin-American presidential portals. It postulates that even though governmental websites contribute to the dynamics of democracy in terms of greater transparency and participation in government processes, online government communication is neither completely symmetric nor transparent, since the ways of constructing, presenting and accessing the information are linked to cultural schemes. In this sense, the work argues that the search for transparency in Internet communication can expect -at bestclear and even translucent States, where transparency limits are determined by the sets of values and symbolic representations already existent in each society’s political culture.