The research findings will be shared with a range of academic and practitioner and policy audiences in the UK, Malawi, India and globally.
Academic publications
Noske-Turner J, Sivaram N, Kalley A, Hiremath S. (2024) Subversive Recipes for Communication for Development and Social Change in Times of Digital Capitalism. Social Sciences. 13(8):393. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13080393
The era of digital capitalism poses conundrums for communication for development and social change scholarship and practice. On one hand, mainstream social media platforms are an increasingly ubiquitous element of the everyday media practices of growing portions of the global population. On the other, the profit-driven architectures can make these hostile spaces for progressive social change dialogues. While a burgeoning literature exists on the uses of social media as part of hashtag-activism and social movements, much less critical consideration has been given to NGOs’ and civil society organizations’ uses of capitalist-driven social media platforms in their development and social change efforts, and the challenges and compromises they navigate in this, consciously or not. This paper argues that meaningful uses of social media platforms for social change requires cultivating a hacker mindset in order to find tactics to subvert, resist, and appropriate platform logics, combined with an ecological sensibility to understanding media and communication. This paper analyzes how metaphors, specifically of a recipe, can offer a productive, praxis-oriented framework for fostering these sensibilities. The paper draws on insights from workshops with IT for Change, a civil society organization in India, which is both a leader in critiquing the political and economic power of Big Tech especially in the Global South, and beginning to use Instagram for its work on adolescent empowerment.
Noske-Turner, J. (2023). Communication for Social Changemaking: A “New Spirit” in Media and Communication for Development and Social Change?. International Journal Of Communication, 17, 23.https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/18759
In pockets of media and communication for development and social change (MCDSC) a distinct set of practices around a worldview emphasizing optimism, chic, creativity, boldness, and “changemaking” is emerging. This trend is in stark contrast with the momentum of our current academic debates exploring the role of communication in the decolonization of MCDSC. This article aims to bring greater critical attention to what I term communication for social changemaking.
Through an analysis of selected cases from a sample of program texts spanning 10 years, communication for social changemaking is found to rest on an underlying “spirit” that justifies the employment of capitalist mechanisms for social purposes and a common good. This article argues that there is an urgent need to critically interrupt the assimilation of global capitalist values in MCDSC practice where they undermine social justice goals, and also calls for research to explore how practitioners are both adapting and resisting these discourses.
Conference papers
Noske-Turner, J. (2024) ‘Development’ is like..?: Unmaking communication for development with metaphors ’. International Association of Media and Communication Researchers. Jun 30-July 4, 2024. Christchurch, New Zealand
For decades, post-developmentalists have offered grim metaphors for development. It has been described as a “crumbling lighthouse” (Sachs, 1992, p. 1), as “an unburied corpse”, (Esteva, 1992, p. 6), and as a zombie, “dead and alive at the same time” (Gudynas, 2011, p. 442).
But even as we witness a contraction of traditional development funding (Taggart & Power, 2022), there is simultaneously a naturalisation of the myth of ‘just capitalism’ (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2018; Richey & Ponte, 2011): development is certainly still not dead yet. Instead it appears revived by a greater circulation of funding from private foundations, private sector partnerships, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprise models. Concerned with understanding the experience of, and modes of resistance to, the neoliberalisation project from the perspective of local NGOs involved in communication for development and the communities they work with, this presentation shares a series of metaphors generated about core and evolving concepts.
Metaphors are powerful tools for political imaginings. For Paulo Freire, dreaming is a political act, connected with hope, imagination and creativity, and a necessary antidote to resist neoliberal fatalism (Freire, 2007). Escobar (1995) highlighted the role of generating new narratives in making and unmaking development and the Third World, and later (Escobar, 2018) called for a kind of ‘social dreaming’ to imagine alternative futures. Used method for research inquiry, metaphors may enable us to access non-Western ways of knowing by refusing the Euro-centric scientific “dualism between the real and the unreal, between realities and fictions” and instead by working allegorically “we imagine coherence without consistency.” (Law, 2004, p. 139).
This paper draws principally from a series of participatory and creative ‘Making Metaphors’ workshops with organisations in Malawi and India, where participants created models of metaphors using craft and everyday materials, including materials from local shops and markets. These were created in response to prompts such as ‘our organisation is like… ‘ ‘communication for us is like…’, ‘social enterprise for us is like…’, ‘donors are like…’, ‘development is like…’.
The affective, precise fictions for unmaking and remaking communication for development that were generated offer an “immersion into their worlds” and “a temptation to listen” (Foster, 2015, p. 52).
Noske-Turner, J. (2024) ‘Finding a way: social enterprise as acts of care and protest’. Communication as co-creation – Collaborative Expression Through Engaged Media Practice: IAMCR Pre-Conference. June 27, 2024. Sydney, Australia.
“In this metaphor, my body is like our organisation, and I am wearing this necklace which has beads that represent the challenges of the youth, women and children in Malawi. These problems are so heavy, weighing down the body, because our organisation doesn’t have enough resources to take care of all of it; that’s when we started looking at social enterprise and marketing some of the services that we have. The organisation fights on, and finds a way to carry it.” (Workshop participant, Malawi)
Questions of viability and sustainability have become urgent and existential for local NGOs engaged in development. Despite narratives of an ‘Age of Choice’, the current era of development funding is more accurately characterized as one of funding scarcity, rather than of abundance, and an age of competition and conformity to market demands, rather than of autonomy and choice (Taggart & Power, 2022). Communication practice is at the frontlines of these pressures. The same skills, tools and media that are potent for development and social change are in demand for marketing and branding of development, making it a practice that is perpetually at risk of a deft switch from communication for ‘doing good’ to communication for ‘looking good’ (Enghel & Noske-Turner. 2018), and at risk of a neoliberal-driven story curation hijack (Fernandes, 2017). Communication processes are often the first budget items to be cut.
Using creative, arts-based methods, this research engaged with local NGOs to generate rich understandings of their responses to the contracting funding landscape. The ‘precise fictions’ that emergers through stories and metaphors offered powerful insights that indicates that the turn to social enterprise strategies should not simply be read as proof of unbridled neoliberalisation, but perhaps also simultaneously an act of care, commitment, and protest against the entrenched power imbalances in development.
Noske-Turner, J. (2024) ‘The Terracotta and the Glitter: Learning partnerships social media for social change teaching in the neoliberal HE contexts’. Strengthening Communications for Social Justice through Education and Research: ICA Post Conference. June 25, 2024. University of Queensland.
The era of digital capitalism poses conundrums for communication for social justice scholarship, practice and pedagogy. On one hand mainstream social media platforms are an increasingly ubiquitous element of the everyday media practices of growing portions of the global population. On the other, the profit-driven architectures can make these hostile spaces for progressive social change dialogues. While some scholars have pointed to the need to look beyond NGOs and towards social movements as ‘laboratories’ of justice-driven practices of communication (Tufte 2017; Thomas 2018), there is at the same time a need to close the loop, and consider NGOs’ and civil society organisations’ uses of capitalist-driven social media platforms in their development and social change efforts. There is an imperative to understand the challenges and compromises they navigate, and their critical awareness of doing so. This paper shares how creative and story-telling research methods using metaphors offered a productive, praxis-oriented approach to bringing attention to and critically reflecting on these challenges. It draws on insights from workshops with IT for Change, a civil society organisation in India, which is both a leader in critiquing the political and economic power of Big Tech especially for the Global South, and also beginning to use Instagram for its work on adolescent empowerment.
Secondarily, the presentation will share experiences of fostering engagements with partner organisations, including IT for Change, in communication for social change pedagogies. With specific reference to Loughborough University London’s MA Communication, Media and Development, the author will reflect on how an Advisory Board made up of professionals from UN Agencies, activist organisations, and universities has helped to foster collaboration and partnerships in teaching and learning.
Noske-Turner (2023) “Exploring social justice-frameworks for Communication for Social ‘Changemaking’”. IAMCR Conference, Lyon.
While media and communication for development and social change scholars have been advocating the importance of postcolonial, feminist and anti-capitalist critical frameworks to inform the future of the field (e.g. Dutta, 2011; Tufte, 2017), there is in parallel a very different school of thought taking root within the domain of practice.
While the former seeks to resist global capitalism through communication, the latter embraces ‘enlightened capitalism’ as a solution to social problems and the failings of development. This approach is promoted by the growing chorus of philanthropies and private financing actors in the development space (McGoey, 2015, Moran, 2014, Chakravartty & Saakar, 2013), and associated with shifts in the funding landscape towards increased scarcity and competition for funds (Taggart & Power 2022). This discourse positions everyone, from “street hawkers to elite technologists” (Irani, 2019, p. 2), as well as entrepreneurial celebrities (Chakravartty & Saakar 2013), as ideal ‘changemakers’. ‘Changemaking’, is a term frequently used to garner broad support for the idea that self-made social change leaders with entrepreneurial mindsets as ideally placed to bring about a vaguely defined notion of (positive) social change (Teasdale et al., 2020).
This paper introduces a new research project (project ref: AH/W009242/1) critically investigating what I call ‘Communication for Social Changemaking’. This project will build on and contribute to an existing body of literature concerned with the growing neoliberal and capitalist influences on CSC, which can often push the responsibility for development onto individuals, exclude the very poor, and ignore the structural and political causes of poverty and injustice (Dutta 2015; Roy, 2010; Irani, 2019; Gurumurthy 2010; Wilkins and Enghel, 2013, Enghel, 2015). Importantly this project aims to learn from and with Southern practitioners to engage directly with these tensions. In doing so, the research recognizes that many practitioners are seeking alternative approaches in a response to the highly precarious and dependent ways of working that characterize current traditional donor funding requirements as they seek ways to sustainably determine their own priority actions and approaches in response to local needs. The project will explore practitioners’ adaptations of ‘changemaking’ discourses, and collaborate towards generating social justice-driven frameworks for Communication for Social Changemaking.
Guides and tools
Noske-Turner, J., Akambadi, J., Makina, L. (2024) Making Metaphors Workshops: Research Guide. Loughborough University. Online resource. https://doi.org/10.17028/rd.lboro.25226756.v2
A guide to using the ‘Making Metaphors’ approach has been produced and is freely available under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 licence. You are free to use, adapt and share this resource for non-commercial purposes, provided you acknowledge this source.