Communication For Social Change Research Articles

Communication and Action: Re-Reading Habermas in the Age of Activism

The combined effects of digital communication technologies, political upheavals around the world, waves of powerful activism and protests have injected a new urgency into communication research. How communication theory is able to respond to this challenge is a matter of discussion, including the question of the adequacy of older theories to the new circumstances. This paper, aims to add to this discussion by returning to Habermas’s pragmatics, one of the 20th century communication classics, to reflect on how communication and other forms of action interact in campaigns for social change in the context of the growing reach of strategic communication and the growing role of social media in activism. This article starts by posing theoretical disjuncture as a problem shared by a number of communication subfields, such as public communication, public relations, communication for social change, and my particular example, development communication. The more recent scholarship, however, has moved away from this state of knowledge. Instead, scholars highlight the need to embrace non-linear models of communication for social change, and appear to embrace hybridity to deal with the theoretical confusion in the field. The analysis presented in this article aims to demonstrate that Habermas’s communication pragmatics works well to explicate complex campaigning practices in a consistent and yet theoretically expansive way. Re-reading Habermas makes it possible also to respond to the call articulated by social movement scholars to move beyond the limits of strategy and to recognize the importance of larger cultural conversations and scripts. Conceptualizing public campaigning as chains of speech acts, defined here as both linguistic and nonlinguistic acts, offers an analytical tool that works across different levels, spaces, and actors involved in social change efforts and that privileges communication as the explanatory mechanism for the contemporary social change praxis. Finally, returning to Habermas’s work underscores the importance of a valid position, rather than a desirable identity, from which to engage with others in the social world. This invites a clear and consistent focus on action and its basis (moral position) rather than on attributions ascribed to organizations and campaigners (identity). The key question thus shifts from ‘Do you like me/trust me sufficiently follow me?’ to a more substantial, ‘Is this a good thing to do?’.

La enseñanza de la Comunicación para el Cambio Social en la formación de estudiantes de Comunicación Social y Audivisual / The teaching of Communication for Social Change in the training of students of Social and Audiovisual Communication. El caso de la Universidad de Chile / The case of the University of Chile

The article is a case study that describes how the communication for social change is incorporated and taught to future communicators in the journalism and film and television careers of the Institute of Communication and Image the University of Chile. Through the program review of the basic training courses in communication and specialized in both careers, thesis reports, and questionnaires to teachers, the level of education was assessed and the approach on relation to the graduation profiles proposed like a critical professional. The study demonstrates that communication for social change has become a space within the curriculum, however, it is complementary and non-core or priority of the training plans, missing out on a critical curriculum and with greater degree of social bonding.

Connections with Paulo Freire’s legacy in anti-racism media activist collaboration in Finland

In this article, we introduce the Finland-based initiative Anti-Racism Media Activist Alliance (ARMA Alliance, 2018-2020). The article presents our ethical- methodological reflections about the processes of collaboration and dialogue we have experienced as co-founders and coordinators of ARMA Alliance. Our analysis is grounded on our joint retrospective analysis of how the activist-research purposes of ARMA Alliance connect with Paulo Freire’s legacy. Our objective is to contribute to scholarship that problematizes the multi-layered relationship between research and activism in collaborative processes of communication for social change (in our case, against racism). First, we present what the ARMA Alliance initiative means and how it connects with Paulo Freire’s work. Then, we look back at the decolonial insights, cathartic encounters and dialogues that led to the development of the initiative. After that, we reflect about the relationship between collaboration and conscientization. Lastly, we indicate some experiences in putting dialogue and collaboration into practice.

The Imperialism of Categories: Concepts and Contexts in Communication for Social Change

AbstractThis article is a critique of communication and social change (CSC) theory. It makes a case for re-centring context in theory and practice and for appropriate uses of categories and concepts to the making sense of of situations in the developing world. Based on fieldwork with an indigenous community in South India, the Irulas, the article explores their very specific context on the margins of globalising India and their experience with access to and use of laptops provided by the State government. It argues that David Harvey’s concept ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’ (ABD) ‘travels well’ and can be used to make sense of the contexts of the precariat and in particular, communities such as the Irulas. Based on conversations with theory in CSC it makes a strong case for the need for textured understandings of cultural and social contexts as the basis for CSC interventions.

Reformulando la comunicación institucional de la universidad pública española desde el enfoque de la comunicación participativa

La teoría y la práctica de la comunicación institucional de las universidades públicas en España tienen un marcado carácter corporativo e instrumental. En esta investigación se discute la posibilidad de implementar una planificación y gestión comunicativa centradas en priorizar procesos comunicativos más horizontales y participativos. Para ello, se realiza un estudio cualitativo empleando la técnica del panel Delphi con 10 investigadores e investigadoras destacadas de universidades españolas, cuyas líneas de investigación están enmarcadas en la comunicación participativa o para el cambio social. El estudio evidencia que la apuesta por un modelo de comunicación institucional universitaria participativa requeriría el convencimiento y la implicación de la comunidad universitaria al completo y conllevaría que se estableciesen procedimientos y mecanismos que garanticen la transversalidad de la comunicación así como la presencia activa de los diferentes grupos intra y extrauniversitarios que conforman la institución en el diagnóstico, diseño, ejecución y evaluación de la comunicación institucional.

Driving Social Change Through Forum Theatre: A Study of Jana Sanskriti in West Bengal, India

This article examines Forum Theatre as a form of participatory communication for social change. Based on an ethnographic study of Jana Sanskriti ( JS), a Forum Theatre group working for over three decades in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, this article seeks to show how this form of theatre, developed by the Brazilian activist Augusto Boal, subverts the passivity inherent in the communicator–receiver model of the dominant paradigm by activating the critical consciousness of the spectator and triggering a process of social change through dialogue and discussion. JS has been using Forum Theatre to address some of the deeply entrenched social norms in rural West Bengal, including those related to patriarchy, child marriage, domestic violence, and maternal and child health related issues, by extending Boal’s notion of the ‘spect-actor’ to encourage the spectators to become ‘spect-activists’, who then are engaged in community-level work on social change. We suggest that this form of communication is clearly bottom-up, radically participatory, community-based and led by the oppressed, as has been advocated by several scholars working on communication for social change.

Comunicación y desarrollo en las agendas internacionales

las teorías sobre desarrollo y las de la comunicación social comenzaron a entrecruzarse en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, configurando luego el campo de la Comunicación para el Desarrollo. Las dos perspectivas principales de ambas disciplinas hasta los años 80, las teorías de la modernización y de la dependencia, protagonizaron también la disputa sobre la regulación del flujo informativo en los organismos internacionales. Más recientemente, los Objetivos del Milenio y la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible retomaron la visión instrumental de la comunicación consolidada en los años 90, aunque abierta al nuevo enfoque de la Comunicación para el Cambio Social. Este trabajo recorre los principales hitos de conformación del campo, y propone algunas claves de lectura de su situación actual.

Communication for Social Change: Seldom a Stand Alone, and Rarely Verified


 
 
 
 Background: Communication for social change is rarely a stand-alone initiative. More often it is combined with several communication purposes such as networking, organizational visibility, information dissemination, or behavioural change.
 
 Purpose: This article reports on an inter-disciplinary, capacity building experiment that combines communication strategy development with Utilization-Focused Evaluation (UFE).
 
 Setting: The analysis stems from close to a dozen case studies where we tested a hybrid approach of UFE and communication strategy development. Our partners were research teams in a variety of areas including open education, open and collaborative science, Internet privacy, cyber-security, and open data. The Networked Economies Program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa) funded each one of the research teams. The partners were based in different countries and had a global reach.
 
 Intervention: The authors are members of a research project entitled “Designing Evaluation and Communication for Impact” (DECI) that provides mentoring in evaluation and communication to partners. This article focuses mainly on lessons from DECI-2, the second phase of the project that was operational from 2012-2017. DECI is led by a team in Canada and has engaged regional mentors based in Latin America, Asia and East Africa, who have provided much of the capacity building support to partners in their regions. At the end of each mentoring cycle, the DECI team produced a case study summarizing the experience. The collection of these case studies is the basis for this article.
 
 
 
 Research Design: This article is a meta-evaluation of the experiences gained from the mentoring. It brings the findings from the grounded work and seeks to find theoretical insights from the evaluation and communication literature. Existing family trees in evaluation and communication are reviewed in search for commonalities that underlie the hybrid decision-making framework.
 
 Data Collection and Analysis: The article leans on the findings of the case studies and the hybrid framework. Our analysis builds on earlier work by the authors in communication for social change. In particular, we analyze a common pattern where communication strategies tend to encompass several purposes in tandem. We refer to the planning steps in utilization-focused evaluation as a structured decision-making process that can help organize communication planning. Finally, we reflect on the benefits of formulating communication objectives that can be tracked or measured.
 
 Findings: The hybrid decision-making framework allows communication planners to add some rigor to their strategies. At the same time, it invites evaluators to introduce evaluation questions about the outcomes of a communication intervention. An external evaluation of the DECI-2 project concluded that the combined decision-making process enabled partners to become better at adaptive management. The process introduced reflection spaces and helped teams adjust their projects as research findings emerged, and as conditions shifted in the policy arenas that they sought to influence.
 
 
 
 

Rostros mestizos: una propuesta comunicacional para el estudio de itinerarios terapéuticos ancestrales en Latinoamérica

En un contexto de medicalización de la vida cotidiana y disciplinamiento de los cuerpos, se torna apremiante preguntarnos qué ocurre con las percepciones colectivas y las prácticas en salud, particularmente en las poblaciones latinoamericanas con culturas sanitarias ancestrales. En este marco, aquí proponemos el análisis de las representaciones sociales sobre los “itinerarios terapéuticos locales”, desde la mirada disciplinar de la Comunicación Social, en tanto espacio simbólico donde se generan los procesos de producción y circulación de significaciones sociales. Para ello, ponemos a consideración tres argumentos. El primero presenta al subcampo de la Comunicación y Salud, y las problemáticas que allí convergen. Bajo ese marco teórico, abordamos a la Salud intercultural y a la Comunicación para el cambio social como posibles herramientas intelectuales para reflexionar sobre las distintas “maneras de curar”. El segundo argumento refiere a la posibilidad de pensar a los discursos en torno a los conocimientos y recursos terapéuticos tradicionales, como parte del patrimonio cultural intangible de una población. Atendiendo a los conflictos que conllevan los procesos de patrimonialización, es central que se busque abordar los patrimonios locales en toda su complejidad, lejos de miradas escencializantes que hacen de la diversidad una exotización. El tercero plantea la necesidad de indagar en las formas particulares -convivencia, mixtura, invisibilización- que adopta la articulación entre los saberes locales ancestrales y los saberes vinculados a prácticas terapéuticas funcionales a la globalización cultural. Sin dudas, el estudio de los discursos, narrativas y procesos de construcción social de la salud puede revelar uno de los tantos rostros mestizos que delinea la interacción entre lo local y lo global.

Connective Action for Global Fairness: Building Social Imaginaries

Social imaginaries are frameworks within which people organise their collective world; where imagination, not simply reason, plays a part in the construction of social practices. Through a grounded theory approach, this article asks whether and how social imaginaries of global fairness are present in connective action, a type of digital interaction for advocacy. From January 2014 to June 2015, the study followed the Facebook accounts of five advocacy organisations: Hivos, Oxfam IBIS, Intermon-Oxfam, SSNC and Vredeseilanden. Connective action, more than just accomplishing an expressing function of posting and sharing – which could be considered as ‘slacktivism’– denotes cooperating and acting by means of dialogic learning involving reflection and action. The research suggests that current social imaginaries may be built in connective action involving topics of nature conservation, equality, eco-farming, among others. Thus, the field of connective action remains open to theorizing how these imaginaries could constitute a strong foundation upon which communication for social change (CFSC) strategies may be grounded.

KOMUNIKASI UNTUK PERUBAHAN SOSIAL BERBASIS PEMBERDAYAAN MASYARAKAT SIPIL DI PONDOK PESANTREN NURUL HAROMAIN

Islamic boarding schools become a great asset of the nation. Its existence has never subsided to continue to be explored as a source of great value. On the other hand the internal dynamics of the pesantren in responding to important times continue to be studied. This study aims to identify the problems and potential of Nurul Haromain Islamic Boarding School Malang Regency related to entrepreneurial management in managing the Q-Zulal water business. The design of Participation Action Research research is used as one of the qualitative methodologies. The results of this study indicate that the limitations of production management and human resources in managing the Q-Zulal water business as a basis for consideration in formulating planning and implementation of civil society-based empowerment programs. To overcome this problem, a group discussion, workshop and mentoring forum was conducted with a focus on production management and management resources. Through this activity, outputs are generated in the form of Standard Operating Procedures and structuring of management resources. Through this scheme, this research is not only a means of seeing the existing reality, but also as a part of communication for social change in empowering pesantren as agents of development

Theorizing media, communication and social change: towards a processual approach

Debates about the role of media and communication in social change are central to our discipline, yet advances in this field are hampered by disciplinary fragmentation, a lack of shared conceptual language and limited understanding of long-term shifts in the field. To address this, we first develop a typology that distinguishes between approaches that foreground the role of media and communication as an agent of change, and approaches that treat media and communication as an environment for change. We then use this typology to identify key trends in the field since 1951, including the sharp downturn in work focusing on economic aspects of change after 1985, the decline of grand narratives of social change since 2000 and the parallel return to media effects. We conclude by outlining the key traits of a processual approach to social change, which has the capacity to offer the basis for shared language in the field. This language can enable us to think of media, communication and social change across its varied temporal and social planes, and link together the processes involved in the reproduction of status quo with fundamental changes to social order.

Communication for development and social change: an introduction

ABSTRACTThis article serves as an introduction to studying the role and place of development communication for the special issue on ‘Media and Communication in Development and Social Change’. It explores the scholarship and practice of media and communication for development, social justice, and the empowerment of individuals and communities around the globe. This article will briefly trace the history of development communication (devcom), present diverse approaches, and critique these approaches and the embedded discourse of development and change as articulated in the modernization paradigm. Briefly, it will provide ideas and a model for devcom in the early phase of the twenty-first century. In addition, this article will serve as an introduction to the articles included in this special issue.

Youth-led communication for social change: empowerment, citizen media, and cultures of governance in Northern Ghana

ABSTRACTThis article critically assesses the possibilities and limitations of strategic communication initiatives to enhance cultures of governance among youth in Northern Ghana. The analysis is embedded within contemporary debates about communication and social change, with particular focus upon dynamics between citizen media development, youth-centred citizen journalism, and processes of community mobilisation and development. Findings suggest that the project has opened up to dynamic, youth-led social change processes, evidenced by the creative, proactive enactment of citizen engagement. Youth changed not only their self-perception around agency and ability to act, but also influenced community development in a variety of ways.

Culturally centering social change communication: subaltern critiques of, resistance to, and re-imagination of development

ABSTRACTChallenging the dominant framework of culture as development that incorporates culture as a tool for neoliberal growth-driven development, the culture-centered approach (CCA) to social change communication offers an entry point for theorizing and articulating communication for social change that emerges ‘from’ and ‘with’ the margins. Interrogating the fundamental notion of what counts as development, the CCA seeks to re-turn the discursive sites of articulating development into the hands of subaltern communities at the margins. The theorization of culture in social change communication as an instrument for consolidating the hegemony of the power elite is juxtaposed in the backdrop of a radical inversion of social change communication as a constitutive framework for grassroots participation in social movements, activist politics, advocacy processes, and bottom-up community-led dialogues that seek to transform the very meanings and practices of development. The voices of the margins recognized and represented in local–regional–national discursive spaces interrogate the received meanings of development and social change, producing knowledge that decolonizes the dominant articulations of development.

Adherence to Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria in Pregnancy with Sulfadoxine–Pyrimethamine and Associated Factors: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Benin’s Public Hospitals.

Background: Gestational malaria is a public health problem, thus responsible for morbidity and mortality risk to both the foetus and the mother. The intermittent preventive treatment with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine during pregnancy (IPTp-SP) is one of the strategies recommended by the WHO to prevent this pathology and its consequences during pregnancy. In Benin, the adherence rate remains below the programmatic targets. This study aimed to identify the factors associated to the adherence to at least two IPTp-SP doses for postpartum women of the University Hospital HKM of Cotonou (CNHU-HKM) and the University Hospital for Mother and Child (CHU-MEL) of Cotonou. Methods: A cross-sectional hospital-based study was conducted over a 3-month-period, from July to September 2015 in the field of gynaecology and obstetrics departments of the two hospitals. All the mothers who had delivered and were still hospitalized at the time of the study were enrolled. Results: During their last pregnancy, 63.11% of women had taken at least two doses of IPTp-SP. Four determinants of adherence to the two IPTp-SP doses were associated to the adherence to two doses of IPTp-SP: i) adequate knowledge of the number of doses of SP to be taken during the pregnancy (p-value<0.0001), ii) participation in communication for social and behavioural change on IPTp-SP (p-value<0.0001), iii) adequate knowledge of the number of tablets per dose of SP (p-value=0.0100), and iv) comprehensive knowledge of malaria prevention measures during pregnancy (p-value=0.0200). Conclusion: Raising and improving women's knowledge on malaria are necessary to achieve ITPp-SP adherence. Particular emphasis should therefore be placed on communication for social and behavioural change for pregnant women, family decision-makers, community leaders and healthcare workers.

Subalternity, Neoliberal Seductions, and Freedom: Decolonizing the Global Market of Social Change

In this essay, working through our journeys as academic-activists collaborating with subaltern communities in the global South on social change processes, we perform autoethnographically a politics of decolonizing the neoliberal reproduction of social change in postcolonial spaces. Through our conversation, we interrogate the White/Brown privileges of race, caste, class, and gender that remain erased in much postcolonial theorizing of culture and social change. Our autoethnographic dialogue, on one hand, interrupts the seduction of neoliberal tropes in communication for social change and, on the other hand, decolonizes autoethnography as a practice for (re)producing privileged identities within the imperial sites of primarily U.S.-based academic institutions. Through the interrogation of our own caste, class, and gender positions within postcolonial social change collaborations that erase spaces for subaltern articulation, we seek to decolonize the postcolonial privileges that are created, circulated, and promoted in the multicultural Anglo-Saxon/Asian university. Our conversations amid the impossibilities of co-creation in subaltern spaces suggest strategies of decolonizing the production of postcolonial knowledge, offering radical frames that fundamentally redefine the interpretations, practices, and politics of communication and social change in postcolonial contexts.

Catalysing social change in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: evaluating the LIN model of participatory community development

Abstract In communication for social change, a catalyst can play an important role in creating dialogue within the community, leading to collective actions and providing solutions for common problems. In urban communities of developing countries, this role is more essential because of the complexities of urban social issues and often the absence of traditional community structures. This research evaluated the LIN model of participatory community development in Ho Chi Minh City and demonstrates how urban NPOs have altered their self-perception from being ‘charity organizations’ to be a part of the community development process in HCMC as a result of LIN’s work. However, LIN’s catalyst model faces some challenges, particularly in applying Western concepts of community development and tenets of participatory social change in the Vietnamese context. As a result, a revised catalyst model of urban community development in Vietnam is suggested with three additional elements: leadership strategy for catalyst and NPOs, context understanding (local context and stakeholders’ characteristics) and impact evaluation framework based on the local context.

Principles of Participatory Communication Reconceptualised for Instructional Corporate Social Responsibility Communication

ABSTRACTOne of the main aims of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is to contribute to sustainable development, and effective communication is imperative in reaching this goal. When the aim of communication is to contribute to sustainable development, it falls within the field of communication for social change, where the participatory approach is the norm. However, the context of instructional CSR communication poses challenges to the traditional conceptualisation of the participatory approach. This creates a need to reconceptualise the participatory approach for instructional CSR communication contexts. A literature review identified four main principles of the participatory approach (dialogue, participation, cultural identity, and empowerment) and illustrated how they are traditionally conceptualised. The empirical study focused on two companies’ CSR programmes where agriculturists were assisting emerging farmers with training, skills development and mentoring. Sixteen semi-structured interviews with farmers and agriculturists were conducted to determine the applicability of the theoretical principles as traditionally conceptualised for this context. We argue that beneficiaries may not be able to participate as equal partners in all aspects of the CSR initiative from the beginning (as traditionally assumed), but that they should, through their involvement, be empowered to participate more meaningfully in later stages even though power will remain largely with the company.

Broadening the perspective of health communication for social policy change

Broadening the perspective of health communication for social policy change