Communications theorist Joaquín María Aguirre Romero surmises that ‘the digital magazine cannot be an object in itself but rather an instrument servicing the diffusion of worthy content’ (Aguirre Romero 1999). Emphasising the new opportunities afforded by digital media, he calls for authors and editors of electronic publications to bear in mind the ‘important mission’ of e-publications, that of dissemination of information and widening access, and to approach new digital media with a ‘new mentality’, conceiving of e-magazines within new media itself, as opposed to traditional print models, and taking advantage of all the resources on offer. As Internet connectivity has increased rapidly across Latin America (Everett 1998; Stinson 1998; Muñoz 1999), so too has the development of new online publications. Individuals and groups in certain countries across the region are now working to take advantage of new technology and harnessing otherwise unavailable opportunities for information access and dissemination by means of e-magazines in particular. Elsewhere (Holdom 2005) I have argued that electronic publication has been notably embraced by the Latin American academic world: scholarly e-journals proliferate in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela, for example, and publication of research in electronic form has overtaken that of some Western countries where a greater percentage of the population will be Internet users. In short, e-publication for a variety of fields – cultural and scientific – is booming in Latin America.
The literary e-magazine is a notable example of this boom. From Cuba to Argentina, fiction writers and literature fans are realising the extraordinary opportunities afforded by the Internet in terms of publishing original work, sharing expertise, reaching a global audience, and fostering a sense of community wherein individuals share the roles of writer, reader, and critic, all for relatively little cost. It is here in particular that e-magazines start to fulfil Aguirre Romero's expectations in moving beyond the boundaries of self-contained cultural artefact to become an instrument of communication.
This chapter seeks to explore how online publishing can generate much more than the static object produced by the printing press, where e-publications can be understood as facilitators of virtual communities. Drawing upon critical debate prevalent in new media studies on the notion of virtual communities, this chapter takes three very different literary e-magazines – from Peru, Venezuela, and Chile – as case studies against which Aguirre Romero's theory will be tested.
