Who is the “other” in the media? How are they represented by private media conglomerates? Are we dealing with “voiceless” subjects, or with powerful “deaf” actors? Is it merely a matter of media visibility? What role does the state and its policies play? How can we understand the relationship between inequality(ies), common sense, and the media? These are some of the questions María Graciela Rodríguez raises in this book. The answers she provides, based on individual and collective research projects she directed for over twenty years, enrich the debate within and beyond academia regarding the role played by the media—powerful political and economic actors—in contemporary media-saturated societies.

Far from a pessimistic view, the book explores and offers insights into how the right to speak is granted to these “others,” belonging to diverse non-hegemonic groups. How can we be considered valid interlocutors when Argentina's historical structure of otherness has denied recognition and citizenship rights to certain social actors within the community? How do those who are delegitimized in their own lived experience by an andro-hetero, ethno-centric, and Buenos Aires-centric media voice process this information? And from what position are these disputes waged in the face of media discourses that recurrently co-produce, legitimize, reinforce, and collaborate in the persistent production of inequality(ies)?

These questions, far from exhausting the discussion, call for a rethinking of the links between communication and democracy and, fundamentally, for an investigation into the tools available to citizens for (political) decision-making based on discourses constructed and circulated from a position of enunciation linked to hegemonic positions.

The dark side of media hegemony places its contributions not only in the field of media analysis but also, and more forcefully, in social studies on culture and power.