Transparency and Participation in Public Service Television Broadcasters: The American Southern Cone Paulo Carlos López-López 1(&) ,Mónica López-Golán 1 , and Iván Puentes-Rivera 1,2 1 METACOM Research Group Investigación Medios, Tecnologías Aplicadas y Comunicación, Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, Ibarra campus, Quito, Ecuador {pclopez,molopez}@pucesi.edu.ec 2 Grupo de CP2: Comunicación Persuasiva, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain ivanpuentes@uvigo.es Abstract. Public service televisions must face a double challenge in the scope of accountability. On the one hand, the need of providing the citizens with all the data related to the institution’s daily activities. On the other hand, the requirement of making the production stages transparent in order to prove the degree of compliance and commitment to a quality service. This paper analyzes the information available on the websites of the public service televisions in the American Southern Cone, meaning Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. When it comes to performance, the fulfilment of these indicators can be con- cluded as unsatisfactory, even though transparency in audiovisual corporations becomes one of the most appreciated intangible values that enable the television public service to regain credibility. Keywords: Transparency Á Public service television Á Accountability America Á Public information 1 Introduction The public service televisions, immersed in an increasingly competitive communica- tion system, should act as broadcasting tools that guarantee the effective defense of civil rights linked to the right of access to public information, the plurality of content or the promotion of native cultures and languages. For that purpose, these organizations have increased the use of transparency practices that break with the traditional impenetrability uphold for decades regarding their management. 1.1 Public Televisions, Transparency and Participation Transparency, understood as “the public accessibility to information about the entity’s management, so that the data are understandable, accessible and expressed in the current language” [1], implies that the internal structures, regarding public service televisions in this case, become more open and communicative with their audience. © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 Á. Rocha and T. Guarda (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology & Systems (ICITS 2018), Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 721, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73450-7_98