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Practice what you preach? Currents, connections and challenges in theorizing citizen media and practice
No full textThis chapter explores the past, assesses the present, and delineates the future of a media practice approach to citizen media. The first section provides an extensive overview of the different currents in research on media practices, identifying the antecedents of the media practice approach in several theoretical traditions and highlighting possible points of convergence between them. Hence, we ground the roots of the practice approach in Latin American communication and media studies, we scrutinize Couldry’s conceptualization in connection to theories of practices within the social sciences, and we examine audience research, media anthropology, social movement studies, citizen and alternative media, and Communication for Development and Social Change. The second section takes stock of the current ‘state of the art’ of practice-focused research on citizen and activist media and develops a critical assessment of how the concept of media practices has been used in recent literature, identifying key strengths and shortcomings. In this section, we also discuss the integration of media practices with other concepts, such as mediation, mediatization, media ecologies, media archeology, media imaginaries, and the public sphere. The third section delineates future directions for research on citizen media and practice, reflecting on some of the challenges facing this growing interdisciplinary field. Here, we illustrate how the media practice approach provides a powerful framework for researching the pressing challenges posed by mediatization and datafication. Further, we highlight the need for deeper theoretical engagement, underline the necessity of dialogue between different traditions, and point out some unresolved issues and limitations. The chapter concludes with an outline of the contributions to this edited collection
Citizen media and practice: Currents, connections, challenges
No full textThis groundbreaking collection advances understanding of the concept of media practices by critically interrogating its relevance for the study of citizen and activist media.
Media as practice has emerged as a powerful approach to understanding the media’s significance in contemporary society. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars in sociology, media and communication, social movement and critical data studies, this book stimulates dialogue across previously separate traditions of research on citizen and activist media practices and stakes out future directions for research in this burgeoning interdisciplinary field. Framed by a foreword by Nick Couldry and a substantial introductory chapter by the editors, contributions to the volume trace the roots and appropriations of the concept of media practice in Latin American communication theory; reflect on the relationship between activist agency and technological affordances; explore the relevance of the media practice approach for the study of media activism, including activism that takes media as its central object of struggle; and demonstrate the significance of the media practice approach for understanding processes of mediatization and datafication.
Offering both a comprehensive introduction to scholarship on citizen media and practice and a cutting-edge exploration of a novel theoretical framework, the book is ideal for students and experienced scholars alike
Understanding citizen data practices from a feminist perspective:Embodiment and the ethics of care
Get PDFA genealogy of communicative affordances and activist self-mediation practices
Get PDFIn this chapter, the focus is on the various ways in which activists across time and space have appropriated traditional media – print cultures, audio, and broadcasting – as well as telecommunication and the internet to develop resistance practices. I present a historical dimension and discuss the various ways in which counter-cultures and activists have shaped information and communication technologies into tools of resistance to suit their particular needs. As such, a conceptual connection is made between the self-mediation practices of activists, communicative affordances, and the mediation opportunity structure. Across various media and communication technologies, a set of affordances which enable activist mediation practices are identified. These affordances are situated at the level of i) temporality – linked to the affordances of asynchronous and real-time communicative practices; ii) spatiality – related to the affordance of media and communication technologies to collapse distance, as well as to enable both private and public communicative practices; and iii) resistance – implicating the affordance to circumvent state-imposed limitations and to hack and shape technologies. It is concluded that while the Empire always strikes back, new affordances will be discovered, and new creative workarounds imagined, rejuvenating old practices as well as constituting new ones
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Starting from the Amazon: communication, knowledge and politics of place in the World Social Forum
Get PDFThis article explores how communication activists in Belém, Brazil, engaged with the 2009 World Social Forum (WSF) when it arrived in their city and sought to take advantage of the opportunity it offered to strengthen and gain visibility for place-based movements in the Amazon. While the WSF has enabled an unprecedented diversity of movements to exchange knowledges and experiences, and to a certain extent succeeded in “giving voice” to marginalised groups, it also has continued to suffer from its own hierarchies and exclusions. These are evident, inter alia, in the asymmetrical relationship that exists between “local” grassroots groups and “global” cosmopolitan elites. Emphasising the centrality of place to the construction of alternative epistemological imaginaries, the article analyses efforts by communication activists to facilitate autonomous processes of knowledge production among movements in the Amazon. At once place-based and transnational in scope, their communication strategies challenge conventional hierarchies of scale and highlight the importance of grassroots movements appropriating communication technologies for their own purposes. At stake here is not simply the inclusion of “local subalterns” within the “global” WSF, but the construction of communication networks that can support the proliferation of alternative knowledge projects at different scales, within and beyond the WSF
Making Global Publics? Communication and Knowledge Production in the World Social Forum Process
No full textThis thesis provides an in-depth empirical analysis of the character and significance of media and communication in the World Social Forum (WSF), focusing on their relationship to processes of knowledge production. Using the concept of publics as a theoretical tool, it explores how, through mediated communication, forum organisers and communication activists seek to extend the WSF in time and space and thereby make it public. Engaging critically with the idea of the WSF as a global process, the thesis considers how mediated communication might contribute to making the WSF global, not so much in absolute terms as by creating a sense of globality, and how the idea of the global relates to other scales. It develops an understanding of the WSF as an epistemic project that seeks both to affirm the existence and validity of multiple knowledges and to facilitate convergence between them, and considers how different communication practices might further this project.
Based on ethnographic research carried out in connection with the WSF 2009 in Belém, complemented by fieldwork at other social forums, the thesis is structured as a series of case studies of different communication practices, ranging from efforts to engage with conventional mass media to various initiatives that seek to strengthen movement-based communication infrastructures and enable WSF participants to communicate on their own terms. These demonstrate that there are many different approaches to making the WSF 'public' and 'global', which beyond facilitating the circulation of media content also involve mobilising new actors to participate in media production and generating a sense of identification with a global WSF process. They also show that mediated communication can contribute to knowledge production not only by facilitating information sharing, but also through the more subtle processes of empowerment, network-building, and translation across difference it can stimulate when embedded in movement dynamics
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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