Yelk Aguilera Santos | Science Engagement and Public Communication Officer, JLASC
Michèle Mattelart, the French literary scholar, sociologist, and pioneering figure in Latin American communication studies, died at the age of 84. Her career focused on the critical analysis of media, culture, and gender representations—work that established her as one of the most influential academic women in the field. Institutions including the Universidad de Chile, the International Center for Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America (CIESPAL), and the Spanish Association for Communication Research (AE-IC) have recognized her passing.
Born on 22 September 1941 in Plérin, Brittany, Mattelart left France in the 1960s to settle in Santiago, Chile, where she remained for a decade (1963–1973). During a period of profound political and social upheaval, she began to examine how the media do not merely inform or entertain but actively shape images, expectations, and representations of femininity and masculinity.
Her contribution was distinctive. While many of her contemporaries focused on linear models of communication — concerned primarily with the transmission of information — Mattelart investigated the interplay between communication, culture, ideology, and power. She turned her attention to the cultural meanings constructed around female figures and how these constructions shape social imaginaries.
Her research showed that advertising messages extend well beyond promoting goods and services; they also generate social representations. Mattelart scrutinized the models of femininity, beauty, consumption, and everyday life circulated through magazines, photomagazines, and other mass-culture products. In doing so, she positioned advertising as a site where values and power relations are reproduced and translated into attitudes and behaviors.
Although her studies focused on traditional mass media—newspapers and television—her theoretical framework remains relevant in the digital era. Her approach offers a valuable lens for analyzing social representations of women within the contemporary digital ecosystem.
In communication science, rigorous methodological application is paramount. Mattelart’s work is particularly significant in this regard, as her approaches established analytical dimensions validated by her theoretical contributions.
In building a scientific culture, it is fitting to recognize that Mattelart’s life and legacy serve as a point of departure for investigating the contributions of women researchers whose names have remained in obscurity, yet who have advanced the social sciences.
ReferencesAsociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación (AE-IC). (2026). In Memoriam. A la familia y amigas/os de Michèle Mattelart. https://ae-ic.org/in-memoriam-a-la-familia-y-amigas-os-de-michele-mattelart
Escosteguy, A. C. D. (2020). Michèle Mattelart and the open veins of communication and gender in Latin America. MATRIZes, 14(3), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v14i3p69-91
Heram, Y., & Gándara, S. (2020). Pionera: Los aportes de Michèle Mattelart al campo comunicacional. MATRIZes, 14(3), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v14i3p51-68
Universidad de Chile. (2026, August 25). Fallece Michèle Mattelart, pionera en Chile en estudios de comunicación y género. https://uchile.cl/noticias/243982/fallece-michele-mattelart-pionera-en-chile-en-estudios-de-comunicacion
Image courtesy of Femicom: https://www.femicom.es/investigadoras/michele-mattelart/