Malmö University Journals
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Participatory video in Myanmar: Capacity building for local facilitators
Get PDFIn 2013, representatives from communities in the Ayeyarwady Delta region of Myanmar (Burma) were trained in facilitating participatory video processes. The ground-breaking capacity-building programme was the first of its kind in Myanmar, and is one of only two examples of participatory video known to have ever taken place in the country. The programme was initiated and funded by the Church of Sweden and implemented by InsightShare in collaboration with the Lutheran World Federation in Myanmar (LWF Myanmar). LWF Myanmar is a key partner of the Church of Sweden, with a long-term presence in the country and deep-rooted relationships with communities across the delta since the devastating Cyclone Nargis in May 2008
Canadian Divides
Get PDFCanada seems to be the exception to the worldwide rule of hostility towards culturally different migrants. Notwithstanding an annual intake of newcomers that by far exceeds that of other immigration countries, like the USA and Australia, and despite the fact that the great majority of the new Canadians are of non-Western origin, Canada has not (yet) suffered from any xenophobic backlash. On the contrary, USA’s northern neighbour is proudly affirming its multicultural reality and maintains its official policy of multiculturalism, even under the current right-wing conservative government. In 2011 more than a fifth of the country’s population was foreign-born, and in the urban centres, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, more than half the residents belong to “visible minorities”, that is, the Canadian term for “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour”.[1] As social researchers Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley note in their comparative study of South Africa, Germany and Canada,[2] the Canadian example is a largely untold success story, which stands out in conspicuous contrast to the darkening powers of xenophobia in Europe Yet, multiculturalism remains largely an urban phenomenon in the vast country where rural and remote are keywords, and it does not seem to encompass the Aboriginal peoples, which amount to 1,4 million or 4,3 percent of the entire population.[3] Canada’s shameful treatment of its Aboriginal population is another story that, albeit not untold, remains unresolved. From the year of Confederation, 1867, a policy of “aggressive assimilation” was implemented and it was to be carried out for more than a century through a system of church-run, government-funded residential schools. In all, about 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their communities and forced to attend these “schools”, where they were subject to systematic mental and sexual abuse. More than 4000 children are reported to have died in them. At its heyday in the 1930s, this system of cultural annihilation counted more than eighty institutions all over the country, and although it was dismantled during the 1970s, the last residential school was closed only in 1996. Twelve years later, in 2008, the federal government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, inspired by the South African example, with the charismatic Justice Murray Sinclair as chairperson. Like its South African predecessor, the Canadian TRC has toured the country, gathering testimonies at public hearings. Many witnesses have also made their statements to the Commission online. The TRC’s report was supposed to be presented this year, but due to the large amount of disclosed records, the mandate has been extended to 2015. On 24 May 2014, at the Aboriginal Club in the small town of Fergus, north of Guelph, Ontario, the Commission’s work was presented to the local Cree community by Justice Murray Sinclair, accompanied by singer songwriter Susan Aglukark, herself a former victim of the residential school system -her song “Still Running”, about the haunting memories of sexual abuse, is based in her own experience. The extent of the suppression and violence has come as a shock to the Canadian general public and shaken the country’s self-image as a global model in its foundations. Perhaps even more heart-rending than the actual recordings from the hearings were the interviews with the generation that has just come of age and learned about the abuse that their parents were subjected to. My visit to Fergus was the conclusion of a two-day ComDev seminar at the University of Guelph, organized by Helen Hambly Odame as part of the Glocal Classroom project (of which more in a special issue of Glocal Times to be published in 2015). The seminar’s theme was Communication for Environmental and Social Change, with the focus specifically on rural and remote areas – which in Canada comprise the large part of the land. Two out of five households have no access to the Internet in a country where most of the huge territory lies beyond “the last mile” of telecommunications. These areas also happen to be where most of the Aboriginal population lives. The dual image of urban cosmopolitan affluence on the one hand, and rural isolation and poverty on the other, is truly striking. Yet, the urban-rural divide is a misleading dichotomy, and to override it is a prime concern for ComDev academics and practitioners in Canada, as demonstrated by many of the participatory communication projects presented at the seminar. Michael Gurstein, editor of Journal of Community Informatics talked of the importance of re-appropriation, to turn the perspective around to the user’s perspective, as in the First Mile project which reverses the metaphor of “the last mile”. From the user’s point of view it is of course the first mile. The latest issue of the Journal is dedicated to this project which, in contrast to an industry driven solely by technology itself and the prospects for profit, tries to articulate user-defined needs. Another striking feature is the prominence of community radio, as in the Ryakuga project, and participatory video, as in the work of film-makers Reena Kukreja and Shirley Thompson. Community development by means of participatory video – and the emerging new genre “interactive web documentary” – will be one of the themes of the upcoming Voice and Matter Festival to be held in Roskilde and Malmö in September2014. They are also in focus in this issue of Glocal Times, the 20th since the journal started (as a webmag) in 2005. Enjoy![1] See http://www.statcan.gc.ca/concepts/definitions/minority-minorite1-eng.htm. [2] Imagined Liberation : Xenophobia, citizenship and identity in South Africa, Germany and Canada. Stellenbosch: Sun Press [3] According to the 2011 National Household Survey. Of the three Aboriginal groups, First Nations (851,560) had the largest population, followed by Métis (451,795), and Inuits (59,445)
Documentary cinema, memory and reconciliation: An interview with Joshua Oppenheimer, director of "The Act of Killing"
Get PDFThe documentary film “The Act of Killing” reflects the ongoing impunity enjoyed by the paramilitary groups responsible for the crimes of Suharto’s regime in Indonesia in the late 1960s. Applauded by critics, internationally awarded and nominated for an Oscar in 2014 in the category "Best Documentary", "The Act of Killing" goes beyond denouncing: it creates a reflection on the recent past of a society that sees perpetrators as heroes and at the same criminalizes victims and justifies the atrocities committed against them. In this article, based on an interview with Oppenheimer, I look into "The Act of Killing" as an example of how documentary cinema can highlight the necessity of structural reforms and contribute to social change, helping to reconstruct the historical memory of a country in the process of democratizing. The film contributes to the clarification of the truth, the search for justice for the victims and for legal punishment for the perpetrators as necessary elements for reconciliation and peacebuilding
Social media and the “Menace to Society”: Potential and limitations of alternative media in Turkey
Get PDFIn the absence of Turkish mainstream news reporting of the Gezi Park protests in May-June 2013, Turkish citizens effectively turned to sites like Twitter and Facebook to access information from the ground and resist against the Turkish authorities. This generated representations of social media’s role throughout the events as filling the gap left by Turkish media outlets. However, this article argues that representations of social media simply as an alternative to the Turkish mainstream media fail to consider the complexities of how activists used social media as well as the complicated relationship between media and the state, and its consequences for open, democratic debate in Turkey. Keywords Social media, citizen journalism, alternative media, counter-hegemonic representations, rhizomatic media
Navigating distant worlds: International development and social change in interactive web documentary
Get PDFAt present, INGOs, development agencies and media producers who attempt to engage audiences in issues of international development and social change operate in an increasingly saturated media environment, which is content rich but time poor. This leads to a search for innovative, web 2.0-native ways of presenting these often complex and challenging issues such as is interactive web documentary -a format that combines digital, interactive and social media with the documentary form. In this article I consider how interactive web documentary might affect audience engagement with issues of international development and social change via audience surveys and interviews based on two cases of idocs. Three modes of engagement appear to be enhanced by the format: active, emotional and critical engagement. Barriers to engagement -access, audience interest and tensions between discourses of gaming and issues of international development and social change- must be negotiated for the format to succeed in its aims
Media and governance in Latin America: The role of communication for development
Get PDFA group of around sixty researchers interested in Latin American issues gathered in May 2014 at the University of Sheffield, in the United Kingdom, for the conference “Media and Governance in Latin America – Exploring the role of communication for development”. Hosted jointly by the University of Sheffield’s Departments of Journalism Studies and of Hispanic Studies and the Sheffield Institute for International Development, the conference was organised by Jairo Lugo-Ocando, lecturer in Journalism Studies at Sheffield University, and a number of his PhD students who are currently doing research on Latin America. Of the sixty-five submissions received, forty were accepted for presentation and organized in ten panels. I participated in the conference with my paper “Voices from the margins – people and the media in the struggle for land in Brazil”, which was included in the panel session Media and Policy Struggles. The conference sought to provide a forum for academic debates about the role of communication in processes of governance and development, focusing on recent events in the Latin American region including protests and widespread civil society demonstrations. The papers presented covered a variety of questions related to media, development, citizen participation, civil society and governance in Latin American countries. There was a clear predominance of papers addressing news media in the region. Many of them focused particularly on issues of political coverage and the roles of news media in reporting social problems such as poverty, violence and drug trafficking. Some also presented research on community media exploring the possibilities that they represent for minorities, children and marginalized communities. In my paper on the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), included in the latter, I discuss MST’s communicative processes focusing on how media play a role in mobilization and representation, based on the findings from my doctoral fieldwork in Brazil
Analysing visual representations in the North Korean Refugee Movement for Social Change and Justice
Get PDFArt can play an important role in the communication and transfer of knowledge by creating powerful emotions and providing a voice to the otherwise voiceless. My ComDev Project Work, on which this article is based, focuses on the plight of North Korean refugees and how they are communicating their fight for freedom and personal experience through paintings and film. A mixed-analysis approach is used to examine three selected examples of visual representations created by the North Korean diaspora in order to attain a deep understanding of how the specific texts are produced and consumed The examination of the intended and received messages illustrates how visual representations can be used strategically by social movements in the area of C4D to reinforce or create a collective identity, and aid in movement participation by enhancing solidarity and self-assurance while creating motivation for collective action. Keywords: art, social movements, North Korea, refugee
Promoting communication in agricultural and rural development: FAO’s priorities and initiatives in 2014
Get PDFComDev within the FAO strategic framework We are less than one year away from the 2015 target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and there are still 842 million people suffering from hunger and malnutrition, three quarters of whom live in rural areas. Considering that 76 per cent of the global rural population has agriculture as the main source of livelihood, supporting agricultural development is crucial for eradicating hunger and extreme poverty especially in developing countries
Verksamhetsberättelse 2015
No full textFör bibliotekets del har utveckling av organisation och arbetssätt fortsatt. För IT-avdelningen har året dominerats av inflyttningen i högskolans nya hus, Niagara, med installation av all teknik som ett nytt hus behöver ha. Vid halvårsskiftet delades BIT, och biblioteket och IT-avdelningen är sedan dess inte längre samorganiserade. Uppdelningen har medfört arbete för att hitta nya arbetsformer som säkerställer ett fortsatt gott samarbete mellan bibliotek och IT
