Transcript Dias nummer 1

Citizen Media & Citizen Tactics:
- pathways to change?
Thomas Tufte,
Roskilde University, Denmark
Presentation given at Ørecomm Festival:
Agency in a Mediatized World:
Media, Communication and Development in Transition’
Roskilde University, 13 September 2011
This presentation
•
What influences agency in a
mediatized world? A few concepts.
•
Revisiting ’citizen media’
•
Exploring citizen tactics
•
Repositioning communication for
development
What influences agency in a
mediatized world?
Media Content, Technology, Audience


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Co-evolution of new and old media
Changing dynamics and relations between
decision-makers and citizens
Leading to new spaces of and
opportunities for deliberation and public
debate, critique and civic action
Analytical Perspectives



Mediapolis: a mediated public sphere, a space
which hosts both possibilities and limitations for
the cultivation of civic action and participation. It
includes the flows of media and communication
practices
Human Security: relates to both material and
immaterial conditions of existence. Is deeply
connected to questions of identity, community
and subjectivity
Citizenship: a social practice grounded in
everyday life. A multi-dimensional concept which
includes the agencies, identities and actions of
people themselves
Why voice matters
- the role of media and technology in carving out space
Allowing voice in public for a vastly
increased range of people
 A greatly increased mutual awareness of
these new voices
 New scales of organisation
 Understanding what spaces are required
for political organization
 New forms of listening

Human Security

Human security as freedom from fear
describes a condition of existence in which
human dignity is realized, embracing not
only physical safety but going beyond that
to include meaningful participation in the
life of the community, control over one’s
life and so forth (Thomas 2007: 108-109)
Human (In)Security
aims with this concept

Helps us understand
– The subjective position from which people
speak and act
– The conditions of existence fundamental of
agency and communiction
– the social reality citizens live in, and the sociophysic situation this reality produces

Helps produce a parameter for the quality
and scope of civil society driven media
and communication initiatives
Disjunctions of Citizenship
- the ménage of exclusion
 ‘the
state is today unable, and/or
unwilling, to promise its subjects
existential security (‘freedom from fear’,
as Franklin D. Roosevelt famously phrased
it) (Bauman 2010: 65)’. When the state
acts in this way, the individual citizen is
left to his own, unable to obtain
existential security, that is unable to
obtain and retain ‘a legitimate and
dignified place in human society and
avoiding the ménage of exclusion’
(Bauman).
Communication Power

‘in a world marked by the rise of mass selfcommunication, social movements and
insurgent politics have a the chance to enter the
public space from multiple sources. By using
both horizontal communication networks and
mainstream media to convey their images and
messages, they increase their chances of
enacting social and political change – even if
they start from a subordinate position in
institutional power, financial resources, or
symbolic legitimacy’ (Castells 2009. 302)
Revisiting Citizen Media
Citizen Media
 Grassroot
media
 Community media
 Participatory media
 Alternative media
 Radical media
 Nano media
 Social movement media, and
……………...citizen media
Citizen Media

The term ’citizens media’ implies
– first, that a collectivity is enacting its citizenship by
actively intervening and transforming the established
mediascape:
– second, that these media are contesting social codes,
legitimized identities and institutionalized social
relations:
– and third, that these communication practices are
empowering the community involved, to the point where
these transformations and chages are possible
(Rodriguez 2001/2006: 774)
Citizen participation tradition
public communication between citizen media and public service media

The basis of legitimacy for this tradition is
the idea that the media belong to the
people, with an emancipatory, expressive,
and critical purpose. This media are
typically engaged in some form of struggle
for collective rights. Where political
change is achieved, they may expire or
become institutionalized as the true voice
of citizens, without being beholden to the
market or government authority
(Christians et al 2009: 25)
Issues in citizen media..

Invited spaces or citizen driven?
(Thompson and Tapscott 2010)
What community is served? Local/
national/transnational/diasporic.
 Participants – audience – consumers –
citizens
 Civic action: Social mobilization..and then?
 Control and finance

Issues…: Accountability
 Upward
Accountability:
– Gaining political
clout
– Balancing social
critique and
political influence
– Holding
governments
accountable for
service delivery
 Downward
accountability
– (Re)presenting
voice
– Balancing a
mass vehicle
with space for
personal
engagement
Citizen media as public service?

The joint public service-entreprise shall, via TV, radio and
internet, etc ensure the Danish population a broad supply
of programs and services including news services,
awareness-raising programs, education (or ‘teaching
programs), art and entertainment. The supply put forth
shall pursue quality, breadth and diversity. In program
planning emphasis should be put on securing freedom of
information- and expression. In conveying information
emphasis must be put on seriousness and non-partisanship
(neutrality, ed). The programming shall ensure the
population access to significant societal information and
debate. Furthermore, emphasis will be put on Danish
language and culture. The programming shall furthermore
reflect the breadth in the production of art and culture and
provide a supply of programs that reflect the diversity in
the cultural interests in the Danish society. (The Law on
Public Service §10).
Citizen Tactics
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Tactics: Efforts made by ordinary people
to create spaces for themselves,
overcoming power structures to which
they are subjected (de Certeau 1984)
Citizen tactics relate to the ways in which
citizens exert agency, articulate ownership
and form their identity in accordance with
their own norms and values, trajectories
and projections for the future
 ’…conceiving
globalization from the
perspective of communication and its
articulation with the social is,
possibly, to understand where what
we might call the re-configuration of
the political identities is occurring.
(It’s the) pursuit of a citizenship as a
process open for definition’ (Reguillo
2005: 70)
Repositioning communication
for development
 Interdisciplinarity
 Normativity
 Deals
with core concerns in
mainstream media and
communication agendas today
Thank you!