Communication and Social Change (CSC) is a field of scholarship and practice within communication studies concerned with the role of media and communication in processes of social change and development. Social entrepreneurship discourses and the broader neoliberalisation of CSC heralds a growing embrace of ‘enlightened capitalism’ as a solution to the failings of development. This worldview mirrors contemporary capitalist cultures and draws on new business management mantras, emphasising optimism, creativity, boldness, leadership and autonomy as an approach to ‘changemaking’.
This approach is promoted by a growing chorus of philanthropies and private financing entities in the development space. It is also accelerated by significant shifts in the development funding landscape towards increased scarcity and competition for funds. In the face of the highly precarious, dependent and top-down ways of working that characterise current development funding, many CSC practitioners seek alternative approaches that would enable them to determine their own priority actions and approaches, be more bottom up and responsive to local needs, more bottom-up, achieve more sustainable solutions.
However, this trend in the sphere of practice is in stark contrast with the momentum of current debates in academia, where of primary interest is in the role of communication in the resistance of global capitalism and in decolonisation agendas. From this perspective, the integration of social entrepreneurship discourses within CSC is a threat to, not an enabler of, social justice.
Un/Making CSC engages directly with these tensions this project investigating the implications of growing entrepreneurial discourses within communication for social change (CSC) from a practitioner perspective. It uses participatory and visual methods to learn from and with Southern practitioners to explore practitioners’ adaptations of ‘changemaking’ discourses, and collaborates towards generating social justice-driven frameworks for Communication for Social Changemaking.
The research was undertaken in two different settings: youth engagement in Malawi and feminist digital justice efforts in India. The project partners with several well-established CSC organisations with experience of navigating these tensions to co-develop insights, actionable frameworks and policy briefs for a social justice-driven approach to Communication for Social Changemaking.
Research Questions and Approaches
The main research question (RQ) driving this Fellowship is: how are CSC practitioners and community organisations adopting, adapting or resisting entrepreneurial discourses and practices in their work? The sub-research questions (SQs) are:
- How do practitioners and community groups currently conceptualise ‘communication’ and ‘social change’, and how are these concepts connected with notions of entrepreneurialism, leadership, aspiration, mobilisation and changemaking (including through critiques of these concepts)?
- In what ways are entrepreneurial and changemaking influences impacting on the funding and sustainability strategies and tactics of CSC organisations and practitioners?
- How does an entrepreneurial worldview (or critiques of it) influence practitioner relationships with stakeholders and understandings of their roles in processes of social change?
- What opportunities and challenges exist for future social justice frameworks for communication for social changemaking?
The methodology used in this research is informed by ethnographic action research and visual participatory methods, collaborating with practitioners, communities and other key stakeholders via a series of interactive workshops, as well as through participant observation, and interviews. Interactive workshops include techniques such as: concept mapping, making metaphors (SQ1), innovation history mapping (SQ2), visual network analysis (SQ3), and futures workshops and conferences (SQ4).