果冻影院

Description

Content:

While there is a recognition of the need to open spaces for direct participation of citizens to influence decision-making processes, there is also increasing scepticism towards the potential of institutional/formal spaces to substantially address urban and rural injustices. Responding to such tension, thinking in the field of communication studies as well as experience from activism and advocacy, have provoked valuable reflections on the potential of different mediums of social mobilisation and networking to avoid co-optation and support transformative processes. The module aims to engage with the relationship between communication, technologies, and social change, exploring specific sets of practices and their potential in supporting oppressed and marginalised groups in processes of recognition and mobilisation.

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听The module starts by problematising the role of traditional media in orchestrating corporate (and state) power and by exploring everyday communication practices of unrecognised or under-represented social groups and their allies. We then go to explore the meaning of 鈥榚mancipatory communication practices鈥� by drawing on case studies and literature from the field of communication and the study of social movements. The module then explores different communication practices encouraging reflection over experiences and debates around participatory photography and video, mapping, social media, and theatre for change. In every scenario, the module interrogates how emancipatory practices relate with spaces of representation, how the diverse set of social identities are negotiated, and examines their potential for altering power relations conditioning forms of oppression and injustice.

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Teaching delivery:

This module is taught in 9 weekly lectures.

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Indicative Topics:

Manufacturing consent: media and the orchestration of power

Social power and everyday media practices

Emancipatory communication practices

Social media, democracy and power

Mapping: connecting urban scales for strategy-making

Participatory photography: images and stories of contestations

Participatory video: a tool for community development and empowerment

Smart cities and the digital turn: implications and responses from cities in the global South

Theatre for social change: reflexivity through performance

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The above are indicative lecture topics 鈥攂ased on module content in 2023/24, subject to possible changes.

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Module Aims:

By the end of this module participants should be able to:

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• critically understand how mainstream media works in the orchestration of power and its inability to give voice to under-represented social groups or alter existing power relations.
• appreciate the significance of everyday communication practices in urban contestations and other struggles and assess the degree to which practices and use of technologies can be empowering and emancipatory.
• engage critically with the role of the Internet, social media and 鈥榖ig data鈥� and assess their potential in processes of social and political transformation.
• appreciate the ways in which methodologies such as mapping can be used in processes of claim-making and recognition and as tools for empowerment.
• critically examine and experiment with participatory methodologies in photography and video, as well as with the use of theatre to confront forms of oppression.
• better engage with and support processes of social change through communication practices and the use of technologies.

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Recommended readings:

Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky, 1994, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, London, Vintage Books. Chapter 1: A propaganda model.

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Milan, S., 2013, 鈥淐ommunication Rights鈥� in The Wiley鈥�Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Social and Political Movements (D. A. Snow, D. Della Porta, B. Klandermans and D. McAdam eds.).

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Nyabola, N, 2018, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya, Zed Books, London, Introduction, pp. 1-13.

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Rodr铆guez, C., 2020, Citizens鈥� Media in Latin America, in A. C. Pertierra and J. F. Salazar (eds.), Media Cultures in Latin America: Key Concepts and New Debates, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 68鈥�89.

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