Malmö University Journals
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Looking back, looking forward: on the renewal of CSC theory
Full text linkOne of the interesting developments over the last decade in communication and social change theory is the beginnings of efforts to engage with theoretical traditions and concerns that have not typically provided frameworks for understanding CSC. The special issue of Glocal Times (2012) simultaneously published with the Nordicom Review with its articles on causumerism and the politics of international development is perhaps the best example available of new thinking in the field
Communication and social change: reclaiming \u27the political\u27
No full textWhat characterizes the multidisciplinary field of communication for development today? And how do the Master\u27s programme in Communication for Development (ComDev) at Malmö University, the Glocal Times web magazine and Malmö University and Roskilde University’s joint bi-national research centre Ørecomm position themselves vis-à-vis this field of research and practice
Enabling “next generation glocal communicators”
Full text linkVast changes are occurring around the world in the ways in which people living in rural and remote areas are communicating within their communities and beyond them. In part, this is driven by emerging information and communication technologies which are often referred to as “nextgen” (next generation implying a transition from Web 1.0 to 5.0, and plausibly, beyond) because the Internet is increasingly weaving human lives with digital devices, applications, data and blended forms of intelligence that involve different levels of human and machine interaction. This ‘internet of things’ is more than a catch-phrase; it is the deepening connection of human beings, networks and machines creating more complex forms of activism across a range of issues from economic austerity to climate change (Juris, 2008, 2012). The problem is that the Internet is largely urbancentric and structured in such a way that it is biased against less populated areas. This situation led to a dualism referred to as a ‘digital divide’ or who had access to the Internet and who did not. Yet, for rural and remote communities, it is not so much a case of having access to the Internet, or not, but rather, what is being done with that access and why that matters to the lives of rural people and the changing relationship between human beings and the natural environment.
Selektion, förvärv och tillgängliggörande av open access-resurser
Full text linkUtvecklingen inom den vetenskapliga informationsförsörjningen går mot att allt mer relevant forskning publiceras som open access (OA). Gränsen mellan open access och kommersiellt tillgängliggjort material är inte konstant, utan vi befinner oss i ett rörligt landskap där informationsresurser rör sig åt båda håll mellan de skilda formerna.Frågan handlar om verksamheten på bred front, från selektion och förvärv till publicering, både innehåll och system, samt förankringen och implementeringen av högskolans OA-policy.Projektets mål är att selektion, tillgängliggörande, utvärdering och gallring av OA-material ska vara lika naturligt och medvetet som det idag är för kommersiella resurser
In (and about) this issue
Full text linkLooking back and looking forward: 10 years of Glocal Times When the first issue of Glocal Times was published in 2005, we stated a moderate ambition that in retrospect we seem to have achieved: "Globala Tider –a Communication for Development web magazine and an archive of Master thesis in Communication for Development developed by graduates from Malmö University in Sweden (ComDev)- will attempt to become a steady forum in which academics, practitioners and students can come together to share and discuss relevant issues for the advancement of the field." The 23 issues published during the past 10 years bear witness to the web magazine\u27s steadiness. Thanks to the engagement of academics, practitioners and graduates from Malmö University\u27s Master\u27s program in Communication for Development (from now on, ComDev) and the unfailing support of ComDev staff members, it gradually became a forum known and taken into account in other spaces in the world where communication for development is taught, practiced and discussed. Low-tech and low-key, the medium grew thanks to the volunteer contributions of each and every author. To our surprise, those contributions haven\u27t faltered in recent years despite the meteoric rise of the publish-or-perish approach to managing academic work in the context of neoliberal capitalism. Keen as we were on promoting public conversation, we were pleased when Glocal Times\u27 2012 Special Issue, co-published in collaboration with the well-established academic journal Nordicom Review and featuring an internationally recognized academic expert as guest co-editor, was expanded in 2015 into a companion Special Issue produced by our colleagues at the Centre for Communication and Social Change in the University of Queensland in Australia. The 2012 Special Issue was a tentative step in the direction of adopting a peer review policy for academic articles, while continuing to include invited pieces authored by recognized practitioners and articles written by ComDev graduates based on their theses. The idea was to move towards a mixed model, such that the forum quality of Glocal Times wouldn\u27t be lost (we thought, and we still think, that contributions written by practitioners do not need to abide by the rules of academic peer review) and at the same time the scholarly stringency of the project would be strengthened. The idea of integrating scholarly work with practitioners\u27 views and accounts remains desirable, and we hope that Glocal Times\u27 tenth anniversary will constitute an opportunity to garner the approval and support required to go ahead from Malmö University\u27s Faculty of Culture and Society. However, in the context of dwindling budgets and the publish-or-perish imperative (compounded by arguments in favor of directing the scant resources available towards short-cycle, hyper-active engagement with so-called \u27social media\u27), this vision may not materialize. The future of Glocal Times as from 2016 will be shaped by these factors. That there are important reasons for the web magazine not only to continue to exist, but also to restate its ambitions and continue to play an improved role as a glocal forum, is what our contributors to this Anniversary Issue told us when we invited them to join us in reflecting about the past ten years, and in imagining the ten years to come. Celebrating the present: In this issue The first thing to be said about this issue\u27s contents is that their arrangement in a static list -the format allowed by our Open Access publishing tool, typical of academic journals - does not do justice to their richness. Importantly, the particular sequence adopted to arrange the list of contents is one among several possible others, and therefore should not be read as representative of a hierarchy. Given the many possibilities, choosing how to go about arranging this index was not easy. Eventually, inspired by Anders Høg Hansen\u27s reference to vinyl records in his article, I decided to adopt the structure of a music album in order to introduce the Anniversary Issue. From this perspective, the ensemble of contributions can be thought of as the \u27soundtrack\u27 of a celebration. Anniversary Issue: Side A \u27Side A\u27 includes four articles derived from the 2014 Glocal Conference on Communication for Development organized by the Ørecomm Centre for Communication and Glocal Change. Authored by Ph.D. candidates and by recently graduated Ph.D.s, the articles look into participatory audiovisual media. The first two articles start from the practice and consider how to improve it. Tamara Plush asks who listens to the marginalized civic voices presumably raised through participatory video production, calling attention to the need to strengthen efforts to elicit meaningful response from the targeted audiences. Mary Mitchell introduces us to work in progress that explores the potential of collaborative interactive documentary-making as a strategy to support the struggle for justice of citizens affected by state malpractice in Peru. The next two articles are instead concerned with establishing the legitimacy of studies of participatory audiovisual media within wider academic fields. Montero Sánchez and Moreno Domínguez focus on the interface between theory and practice characteristic of participatory video in order to attempt an analytically productive (re)definition of the term attentive to empirical variations. Villanueva Baselga argues for the validity of considering participatory video studies as a rightful component of film studies, showing that the analysis of empirical examples of collaborative video production add nuance to well-established taxonomies of documentary film. Altogether, the four articles speak of a concern with assessing and theorizing practice in politically effective ways and invite further work in order to refine research methodologies, analyze praxis and strengthen conceptual formulations. Interlude Anders Høg Hansen\u27s article works as an interlude, linking \u27Side A\u27 and \u27Side B\u27 of this Anniversary Issue. The author proposes that the relationship between musical practices and social movements in contexts of socio-political disruption deserves to be investigated through the lens of communication for social change, and explores existing studies of cases across the globe that speak to his claim. His article brings to the fore the potential for cross-disciplinary integration between cultural studies and communication for development, and exemplifies ComDev\u27s forward-looking approach to expanding the field\u27s boundaries in the past ten years. Anniversary Issue: Side B \u27Side B\u27 of this Anniversary Issue includes sixteen "bonus" short articles. We invited authors to choose a theme or angle to reflect on the past and next ten years in connection with Glocal Times, and are delighted to share their responses. We begin with the views of expert practitioners. Silvia Balit argues for the importance of maintaining a balance between adjusting to the \u27new\u27 and retaining what worked about the \u27old\u27 in seeking to address the current challenges facing commdev practitioners at present. Gordon Adam discusses the achievements of media development aimed at fostering public interest journalism in fragile states in the wider context of short-term allocations of resources and shrinking funding, calling attention to pending tasks. Wendy Quarry and Ricardo Ramírez engage in dialogue about their shared praxis and exemplify how to team up in a self-reflexive manner. Jackie Davies retraces the steps that took her from practitioner work in the field to the creation of the C4D Network via ComDev, calling for more outspoken and better strategized advocacy for commdev. We continue with the views of academics. Thomas Hylland Eriksen draws on the notions of superdiversity and overheating to reflect on the challenge of communicating across differences and imagining a global community in contexts of increasing complexity and accelerated change. Pradip Thomas stresses the need for renewing the critical analysis of the exercise of power in the practice and the project of commdev, arguing for theorization that is contextually grounded. Thomas Tufte makes a plea for scholarly attention to bottom-up, citizen-driven communication initiatives for social change. Martin Scott calls attention to the political nature of the rhetorical struggle over the substance of commdev, highlighting that academics are responsible for the narratives they bring into play in the public arena. Karin Wilkins argues for explicating the politics contained in our conceptualizations of commdev as a productive strategy to broaden our ability to analyze interventions in socially productive ways. The remainder of the "bonus" articles blur the boundaries between communication for development as a professional practice and a scholarly endeavor. Combining a sharp contextual analysis with hands-on knowledge of the field of professional practice, Peter da Costa discusses opportunities and challenges for communicators working with development issues in African countries. Particularly concerned with the glocal communicational needs of people living in rural and remote locations, Helen Hambly reflects on the difficult but crucial task of training a new generation of actor scholars prepared to meet those needs. Equally concerned with the pedagogy of communication for development, ComDev staff member Hugo Boothby weaves selected articles from previous issues of Glocal Times into a self-reflexive account of his trajectory as a teacher, suggesting a future agenda for the theorization of the Master\u27s program as a particular communicative ecology. Alumna extraordinaire Rasna Warah recalls the transformative power of the very first international instance of the ComDev program back in 2002, reflecting on the specific mix of equal opportunity across borders, critical openness and technical imagination at the service of human relationships that characterized the course at the time. Exemplifying how the academic field has expanded in recent years, two ComDev alumni currently in the process of becoming PhDs -Erliza Lopez Pedersen and Rebecca Bengtsson- share their research projects and discuss how they connect to their personal, educational and professional backgrounds. To round up the ensemble of "bonus" articles, ComDev\u27s specialist librarian Linda Karlsson reflects on how to find and share information today, combining pedagogy and service in a way that has been characteristic of the Master\u27s program in the past ten years. Saying thanks As I mentioned at the start of this column, the 23 issues of Glocal Times published throughout the past 10 years would not have been possible without the engagement of academics, practitioners and ComDev graduates, and the unfailing support of ComDev staff members. I\u27d like to take the anniversary as an opportunity to express my gratitude to each and every one of them. Thanks are due in particular to Oscar Hemer, who had the idea to create Glocal Times in 2005 and invited me to become its editor shortly after I graduated from ComDev; to Micke Rundberg, who oversaw the creation of our first publishing platform; to Linda Karlsson, who liaised with the University of Gothenburg to assist us in the transition to a new platform in 2012; and to Ulla Carlsson, Jesper Falkheimer and Karin Wilkins for making the 2012 Special Issue possible. I am also grateful to Kerstin Gossé, Ann-Charlotte Ek, Ylva Ekström, Anders Høg Hansen and Hugo Boothby, who over the years have encouraged ComDev graduates to distill their Master\u27s theses into articles for Glocal Times, and resorted to the web magazine as a pedagogical tool. Last but not least, thanks to Becca Bengtsson, who worked hard to ready this Anniversary Issue for publication. The very first Glocal Times in 2005 included articles from Karin Wilkins, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Thomas Tufte, Gordon Adam, Linda Karlsson, Rasna Warah and Kerstin Gossé, and I am particularly delighted that all of them are part of this Anniversary Issue (Kerstin was too busy with work to write herself, but is still present through Hugo Boothby\u27s discussion of her prior contribution to the web magazine). Moreover, all of the authors in this issue but one are returning contributors (with Martin Scott as a welcome addition). I take the fact that we have all remained engaged in the conversation for ten years as proof of Glocal Times\u27 capacity to invite dialogue, and to listen. Whatever shape the publication takes from now on, I hope those characteristics will live on
Where voice and listening meet: participation in and through interactive documentary in Peru
Full text linkInteractive documentaries are exploring new possibilities for audience engagement through collaborative digital projects that view an \u27outside\u27 audience and the \u27insiders\u27 from the storytelling community as equals, valuing production process and audiovisual product equally. This exploratory study of the strategy and production methods of the Quipu project (Chaka Films, 2015) proposes OpenICT4D as a framework through which to analyse collaborative interactive documentary. Three modes of communication are identified in the Quipu project (speaking, listening and responding), which link diverse stakeholders in Peru and beyond through an online artifact
Two practitioners look 10-years back (A Reflection)
Full text linkWe met in 1984 during a “Methods & Media in Community Development” gathering in Labrador, Canada, an event, organized by Andreas Fuglesang and Dale Chandler with the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Sweden. Here we came across practitioner- champions from around the world who were using media to engage with people in exciting ways. A decade later, we reconnected and collaborated through some FAO work in Pakistan. Since then we have continued our practice working together on various communication strategies, much shared writing, our never-ending Skypes, and our disagreements… How else can one work as a team
Malmö was the start of an incredibly fulfilling journey for me
Full text linkI vividly remember that day in May of 2002 when Oscar Hemer, the head of the Communication for Development (ComDev) Program at Malmö University, sent me an email telling me that I had been selected for the Masters degree programme at the university. I was in my office in Nairobi, having had a particularly frustrating day, and contemplating whether a career in the United Nations was really worth the trouble. Oscar’s email jolted me. I felt a rush of adrenaline followed by a sobering reality check. After having been accepted by several universities to do post-graduate degrees, I inevitably had to decline the offers because I simply couldn’t raise the fees.
Media Development – a ten year perspective
Full text linkThe past ten years have seen rapid developments in terms of media practice, technological advance and the role of the donor agencies. What follows is my brief personal overview of these changes in terms of journalism in fragile states, which are the focus for increasing amounts of development funding.
Another fine mess: communicative ecologies, Glocal Times and me
Full text linkCongratulations to Glocal Times! Time to celebrate 10 years of the Communication for Development programme’s (ComDev) web magazine. Indeed we have a number of important anniversaries in 2015: in the autumn the programme will mark 15 years, while I myself will have racked up a more modest five years on the teaching staff -five years that have been intense, productive and rewarding; a fortuitous time to be working with a programme that goes from strength to strength