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Uruguay was the first country in the Southern Cone of Latin America to carry out a comprehensive assessment of its media landscape, using UNESCO's Media Development Indicators. It was a unique, collaborative research exercise, involving all communication faculties in the country – public and private, in partnership with the UNESCO Regional Office of Sciences for Latin America and the Caribbean, and with the accompaniment of a Consultative Council composed of representatives of the media, government and civil society.

The experience ,going through its legislative framework and presenting, in addition, an analysis of media plurality and diversity. The document also includes a series of recommendations aimed at the different sectors of communication, with the aim of becoming a roadmap for future action.

Six years after this technical study was presented, the UNESCO Regional Office for Science for the region convened a webinar to bring together the report’s authors, with representatives of the member institutions of the Advisory Council that piloted the research, and jointly promote a debate on the advances and challenges that the media system still has pending in Uruguay, in the framework of the XVIII Meeting of Faculties and Schools of Social Communication of America (FELAFACS).

"The methodology proposed by UNESCO includes that the research teams and advisory councils that pilot these exercises can resume these roadmaps in the short and medium term to evaluate progress and /or setbacks, and determine possible new needs," said Rosa M. González, UNESCO's Regional Advisor on Information and Communication for Latin America and the Caribbean. "In other words, these reports are encouraged to be living. evolutionary documents that adapt over time to the new media landscapes that emerge in the country."

This meeting was a first step in this direction, since authors and member institutions of the advisory council were able to discuss the advances and challenges of the media landscape in Uruguay six years later and the relevance of the recommendations of this study in 2021, particularly in the context of current legislative reform in Uruguay. As a follow-up to the meeting, the recommendations will be disseminated among current actors in the country's media landscape with the aim of guiding actions and initiatives in this field.