Glocal Times No 22/23

Glocal Times (GT), the web magazine published by Malmö University's Master's program in Communication for Development in Sweden, is celebrating ten years of publication. This anniversary double issue gathers the thinking of academics, practitioners, and students in the field of communication for development (ComDev) as they reflect on the past ten years and discuss the future.

"Adding to the development of an international community of academics and practitioners, Glocal Times aims at becoming an indispensable digital reference and a vivid forum for the discussion and dissemination of issues concerning communication for development and social change."


Table of Contents

• Editorial: ComDev in the Margins - Oscar Hemer - "...Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Glocal Times is now evaluating how to take a major new step. We intend to become a fully-fledged peer-reviewed academic journal, yet still remaining a forum for graduate students and professional practitioners...." Hemer analyses changes in ComDev as a field over the past 10 years, from the perspectives of both practitioners and academic researchers.

• In this Issue - Flor Enghel - In 2005, Glocal Times was created with the aim of becoming "a steady forum in which academics, practitioners and students can come together to share and discuss relevant issues for the advancement of the field....". Enghel gives a historical review of the magazine from its origins and discusses the web magazine's potential shift, currently under consideration, towards "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."   

• Articles:

1. Glocal Times - Glocal Times Index of past issues
2. Participatory video and citizen voice - We’ve raised their voices: is anyone listening? - Tamara Plush - "...Sheathed in the glamour of filmmaking and technical innovation, participatory video (PV) is often evangelised as a communication for development methodology that intrinsically fosters transformative social and political change. Such celebratory notions, however, can obscure the complexity facing participatory video practice in achieving significant response to the inequities PV participants face...." Plush offers offer the principles of representation, recognition, and response.
3. Where voice and listening meet: participation in and through interactive documentary in Peru - Mary Mitchell - "...Interactive documentaries are exploring new possibilities for audience engagement through collaborative digital projects that view an 'outside' audience and the 'insiders' from the storytelling community as equals, valuing production process and audiovisual product equally...." Mitchel describes the Quipu project's use of OpenICT4D [open information and communication technology for development] as a framework through which to analyse collaborative interactive documentary.
4. Rethinking the definition of participatory video at the interface of theory and practice - David Montero, José Manuel Moreno Domínguez - "...[This paper] aims to outline a number of uses and modes which coexist within PV with the aim of generating a more fruitful discussion on its defining features and the relation between canonical and marginal examples of participatory videomaking...Three key areas are identified as major elements within a PV experience: process, communication and results...."
5. Can we study participatory video within film studies? A succinct approach - Sergio Villanueva Baselga - "...The few theoretical works that already exist point out the role of PV as a process for capacity-building and community empowerment, but obliterate its importance as a specific form of audiovisual product. The aim of this article is therefore demonstrating, through filmic analysis of several PV developed by local organizations, that these videos produced by communities can be considered as filmic objects and conceptualized into the Film Studies field...."
6. Music, movements and conflict - Anders Høg Hansen - "This article introduces a research project to be used in a larger study that aims to investigate how around-the-globe musical practices have become tied up with political movements and functioned as conflict-coping mechanisms in contexts of social and political upheaval...."
7. Towards a global conversation - Thomas Hylland Eriksen - On the history of the internet and the history of ComDev: "...A couple of years ago, I revised and updated my Globalization: The Key Concepts, originally completed in 2006. The changes from the first to the second edition can be said to reflect the changes between ComDev in its first and its second decade...Some of the emerging topics were the rise of a global precariat, where job security and strong unions seem to belong to the past; intensified migratory pressures on the boundaries other rich world; the spread of Internet among the poor; the ubiquity of Chinese firms and products across the world; the ‘appification’ of life in the global middle classes, where the smartphone has become a natural extension of the body; the intensification of Muslim identity politics and secular reactions to it, especially in the Middle East; and, last but not least, a growing sense of vulnerability owing to manmade climate change, which places lofty visions of development and growth on hold in a rather decisive way. Currently, I use the term overheating as a general metaphor for describing the present world of accelerated change...."
8. Broadening our perspectives in communication and in development - Karin Gwinn Wilkins - "...As an academic field, communication for development has been broadening its scope in terms of the types of strategic engagement considered as well as the ways in which communication has been conceptualized. Building on historical critiques of dominant development industries and assertions of dialogic processes, in this most recent decade we are exploring social movements and political protests as integral ways in which groups mobilize to engage strategically in transition...."
9. Looking back, looking forward: on the renewal of CSC theory - Pradip Thomas - "...One 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 [communication for social change]...."
10. Communication about communication for development: the rhetorical struggle over the history and future of C4D [communication for development] - Martin Scott - "...There is clearly a great deal to be said about how social media and mobile technologies have enabled social movements in Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey and elsewhere to mobilise in pursuit of positive social change. From an institutional perspective, we might highlight instead how information, communication and media appears to be gradually achieving a higher profile within the international development community. The most prominent example of this is the potential inclusion of reference to ‘access to information and media’ within the new Sustainable Development goals...."
11. Communication and social change: reclaiming 'the political' - Thomas Tufte - Tufte discusses answers to the following questions: "What characterizes the multidisciplinary field of communication for development today? And how do the Master's 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?"
12. From ‘Hopeless Continent’ to ‘Africa Rising’: emerging discourses, opportunities and challenges for development communication - Peter da Costa - In reference to the continent of Africa, da Costa seeks to answer: "How can development communicators position their work in response to new and emerging discourses, and how can they ensure that marginalised voices are heard and impact on decision-making at different levels? What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of communication practice today? How can communication be better evaluated?"
13. Media Development - a ten year perspective - Gordon Adam - "The 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."
14. Another fine mess: communicative ecologies, Glocal Times and me - Hugo Boothby - "...I begin this reflection on ComDev, GT and my ride so far by revisiting three of the web magazine's articles that have been particularly significant for me during my time with the programme...."
15. Enabling “next generation glocal communicators” - Helen Hambly Odame - "...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...."
16. Two practitioners look 10-years back (A Reflection) - Wendy Quarry, Ricardo Ramirez - The team of Quarry and Ramirez reflect on their work: "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?"
17. A breath of fresh air - Silvia Balit - Balit reflect on changes since her time at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): "...The context has changed considerably since 1969, when FAO first established its Development Support Communication Unit, thus establishing a new frontier. Little was known in those days about how to communicate with illiterate people in rural areas of developing countries, and there was insufficient recognition of the role of local culture and indigenous knowledge. As Colin Fraser, the head of the Unit, used to say, the work we did was like painting on an empty canvas. Top down approaches were prevalent, and development efforts were primarily devoted to transfer of technology...."
18. C4D over ten years - Jackie Davies - "...C4D had been under wraps, unnamed for a long time and to date it's still not easy to figure out why. Because when you are presented with it as a coherent sector with its history, core readings, gurus and strategies it seems logical as a sector, rather than the sort of thing that should be kept secret because it somehow is too complex or challenging to name...."
19. Malmö was the start of an incredibly fulfilling journey for me - Rasna Warah - Warah reflects on her mid-career course of ComDev studies: "... Was it possible for us to imagine a world without 'development' as it is understood now? Was the idea of development, as Sachs noted, 'a ruin in the intellectual landscape'? Was the provocateur Ivan Illich right when he referred to development as 'planned poverty'?"
20. Communication for Development is also a way of life - Erliza Lopez Pedersen - Pedersen reflects on her Master and PhD. studies: "...As an immigrant, I see communication for development as a way of life; mostly because the practical, academic skills and knowledge that I have gained have put me in the position to be cognizant of the environment I live in, and of how I can find and make use of the means to advocate for change...."
21. Back to basic - Rebecca Bengtsson - "...The constant live coverage of events in the world, both by the media and by citizens, is considered to put a new kind of pressure on policymakers and might in turn lead to faster decision-making. It is also putting pressure on the audience, requiring them to question the images they are exposed to - are they real or fake?"
22. On seeking and sharing info - Linda Karlsson - "... A defining aspect of the type of access you can get ...is whether or not you belong to an institution, company or organization that can afford to provide a tailored collection of licensed information resources. Research made available with open access is slowly growing as a response to research funders and universities’ demands for the free and immediate online availability of research articles...."