For this assignment we ask you to demonstrate an analytical approach to the interpretation of media/texts and communication processes within the field of communication for development and social change.

You are asked to focus on a specific example of communication for development/social change (ComDevSC) or media representations associated with ComDevSC as the subject of your analysis. You will write an academic essay of 3000 words that presents an interpretation of your chosen ‘text’ exploring its significance within the specific thematic area that you choose.

Below we present four thematic areas and suggest complimentary literature. These thematic areas are designed to help you connect your essay specifically to the field of communication for development and social change, and some of the important theoretical strands with which it engages.

For a full description of the assignment and instructions see here Examination - Culture and Media Analysis

Thematic Areas

1. Strategic Representations of Development and Social Change.

Martin Scott defines three perspectives which could be a starting point for critical reflection around strategic NGO communication practices

1. How is the need for NGO work justified?
2. What forms of action are audiences invited to take?
3. Do NGO communications reinforce or challenge discourses of global inequality?
(Scott, 2014, p. 138).

These perspectives may prompt you to consider the usefulness of concepts such as "deliberate positivism" and "post-humanitarain communication" when analysing representations of humanitarianism. Here the work of Lilie Chouliaraki is useful specifically her notion of the "Ironic Spectator".

You may also find the work of Nandita Dogra useful if you are working within this theme. Using what she describes as a ‘postcolonial lens’ Dogra considers representations of global poverty in the communications material of International NGOs (INGOs). For Dogra representations within strategic communication risk perpetuating a discourse that dehistoricises the relationship between what she terms the Majority World (MW) and the Developed World (DW). Dogra concludes that in INGO strategic communication there are different forces in tension. The MW is represented as ‘different’ and ‘distant’ but at the same time the MW and DW are connected together through the articulation of a “dehistoricised narrative of the ‘oneness’ of humanity” (Dogra, 2012, p. 188). Dogra makes use of a selection of complimentary approaches to textual and visual analysis that draw on the constructivist approaches to representation that you will recognise from Stuart Hall. Her methodology here provides a good example of methods of textual analysis that are appropriate for this assignment.

Key References:

Chouliaraki, Lilie (2013) The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Introduction and Chapter 7

Cornwall, Andrea (2016) Save us from Saviours: Disrupting Development Narratives of the Rescue and Uplift of the ‘Third World Woman’ in Hemer, Oscar and Thomas Tufte (Eds.) (2016) Voice and Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return. Gothenburg: Nordicom

*Dogra, Nandita (2012) Representations of Global Poverty: Aid, Development and International NGOS. I. B. Tauris, London.

*Fehrenbach, Heide, and Davide Rodogno (eds.) (2015) Humanitarian Photography: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

*Richey, Lisa Ann (Ed.) (2015) Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations: Politics, Place and Power. Oxon: Routledge.

*Scott, Martin (2014) “Media and Development”. London: Zed Books (specifically chapters 5 and 6).

*books available as an e-resource from Malmö University Library

2. Memory, Media and Social Justice

The notion of 'living memory' can be used to articulate processes whereby citizens and groups struggle with the past and the present and with each other about the future of a heritage. Living memory hereby expresses the often contested and continuously developing tensions and understandings on where a community (from local to global) is coming from and going towards. The notion may encourage one to place memory work within the context of participatory, community or grassroot level processes, recognising continuous engagement with the past and envisioning of the future.

Living memory is related to notions of collective and social memory and to mediation, which has been richly researched within the humanities and social sciences in recent decades (see bibliography at the end). Bringing in debates on contested societal memory, work on social movements and social justice brings the subfield in touch with specifically with communication for development (as in e.g. the anthology Memory on Trial, with contributions from e.g. Phillips, Tufte, Tacchi, Butler, Gumucio-Dagron and others).

In relation to communication for development, the 'working through' of the past and its shaping into desired futures, takes place strategically in institutions such as NGOs, schools, news companies/institutions, and major heritage institutions (museums) and is also continuously shaped in mediations in- and outside institutions; in popular culture through movies, novels, journalism, exhibitions, memorials, public art and in more rapid and temporary movement-style mediations, where mythologies, past histories, and new ideas are reworked.

This theme invites for analysis of mediated accounts on groups' or institutions' memory work, on activism and new policy around heated collective memory, on its various players or stakeholders - and in particular the actual representations or media ‘texts’ that probe for particular understandings of the past - as well as future aspirations.

Key references are listed below. You may begin with the anthology mentioned in this introduction, Memory on Trial (eds). Høg Hansen, Hemer and Tufte (2015), and then continue with selected case studies in this book demonstrating memory work's influence and inspiration to communication for development, media and cultural studies, and ethnography. The list also includes other memory studies texts of interest for communication for development analysis.

Key References:

*Assmann, Aleida (2008) 'Canon and Archive' in Young, Sara B., Nünning, Ansgar, Erll, Astrid (eds) (2008) A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies : An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. pp. 97-108

*Assman, Jan (2008) 'Communicative and Cultural Memory' in Young, Sara B., Nünning, Ansgar, Erll, Astrid (eds) (2008) A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies : An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. pp. 109-118

Barthes, Roland (1957) Mythologies. London: Penguin

Bird, Elizabeth and Ottanelli, Fraser M. (eds.) The Performance of Memory as Transitional Justice, Intersentia.

*Casey, Edward S (2004) 'Public Memory in Place and Time', in Framing Public Memory ed. Kendall Phillips, Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.

Henriques, Julian and David Morley (2017) Stuart Hall. Conversations, Projects and Legacies. London: Goldsmiths Press (e.g. Chapter 15 Avtar Brah, Reflecting and Remembering the work of Stuart Hall, and Chapter 16, Lola Young, Policy, Politics, Practice and Theory)

Hoskins, Andrew (2017) Memories of the Multitude. The End of Collective Memory, in Hoskins (ed) Digital Memory Studies. New York: Routledge

Huyssen, Andreas (2000) Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia Public Culture, Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 2000, pp. 21-38 (Article) Duke University Press https://muse.jhu.edu/article/26184

Høg Hansen, Anders, Oscar Hemer and Thomas Tufte (eds) (2105) Memory on Trial. Media, Citizenship and Social Justice London/Berlin: Lit Verlag (see Chapter I, introduction, and case studies chapters III and XIII)

*Joanne Garde-Hansen (2011) Media and Memory. Edinburgh University Press.

*books available as an e-resource from Malmö University Library

3. Voice and Listening
Nick Couldry (2010) distinguishes between voice as process and voice as value. For Couldry voice as process is the “process of giving an account of one’s life and its conditions” (p. 15). Giving an account means telling a story or providing a narrative, but also necessitates a form of listening.

“Voice as a social process involves, from the start, both speaking and listening, that is, an act of attention that registers the uniqueness of the others narrative” (Couldry, 2010, p. 9)

Voice as value is then “choosing to value, those frameworks for organising human life and resources that themselves value voice (as a process)” (Couldry, 2010, p. 2).

Thomas Tufte places Couldry’s discussion of voice directly within the context of communication for social change by connecting it to social movements and their mobilisation of digital communication technologies (2017, p. 44-45). And again here for Tufte these “new technologies of voice” are significant because they also afford new forms of listening.

For Jo Tacchi “Voice is inextricably linked to ideas of dialogic approaches to communication for development and to participatory development” (2015, p. 29), but she cautions that here greater emphasis is often placed on voice as process over voice as value thus allowing people to express opinions and share experiences while failing to ensure voices are “heard in the places and spaces where they might influence decision makers” (2015, p. 30). This lack of emphasis on voice as value connects this theme to discussions of fragmented and niche audiences, and the micro public spheres and homophilic communication practice that results.

Key References:
*Couldry, Nick (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. London: Sage.

Crawford, Kate (2012) Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media in Sterne, Jonathan (Eds.) (2012) The Sound Studies Reader. Oxon: Routledge.

Goodman, Steve (2010) Sonic Warfare: Sound Affect and the Ecology of Fear. London: MIT Press. See Chapter 31 "Planet of Drums" pp. 171-182

Henriques, Julian (2017) Sonic Identities and Conjectures of Listening in Henriques, Julian and David Morley with Vana Gobolt (eds) (2017) Stuart Hall: Conversations, Projects and Legacies. London: Goldsmiths Press

*Lacey, Kate (2013) Listening in the Digital Age in Loviglio, Jason and Michele Hilmes (Eds.) (2013) Radio's New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era. Oxon: Routledge.

Manyozo, Linje (2016) The Language and Voice of the Oppressed in Hemer, Oscar and Thomas Tufte (Eds.) (2016) Voice and Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return. Gothenburg: Nordicom

Patel, Sheela (2016) Building Voice and Capacity to Aspire of the Urban Poor
A View from Below in Hemer, Oscar and Thomas Tufte (Eds.) (2016) Voice and Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return. Gothenburg: Nordicom

Tacchi, Jo (2015) The role of ‘stillness’ and ’nostalgia’ in sustainable development in Hansen, Høg Hansen, Oscar Hemer and Thomas Tufte (Eds) (2015) Memory on Trial: Media, Citizenship and Social Justice. Zurich: Lit Verlag

Tacchi, Jo (2016) When and How Does Voice Matter? And How Do We Know? in Hemer, Oscar and Thomas Tufte (Eds.) (2016) Voice and Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return. Gothenburg: Nordicom

*Tufte, Thomas (2017) Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge: Polity

Wright, Kate (2018) ‘Helping our beneficiaries tell their own stories?’ International aid agencies and the politics of voice within news production. Global Media and Communication Vol. 14 (1) 85-102

*books available as an e-resource from Malmö University Library

4. Difference and Power: Representations of Gender, Race and Class*

In his contributions to the anthology Representations (2013 [1997]) that he co-edits, Stuart Hall eloquently defines his constructivist approach to representation and discusses a set of tools that can be used in the analysis and interpretation, or ‘decoding’, of representations of ‘otherness’. Drawing on postcolonial perspectives Hall asks “Why is difference so compelling a theme, so contested an area of representation?” (2013, p. 215). Hall’s approach, one that is rooted in a British Cultural Studies tradition, is significant for this theme because he addresses primarily texts that form part of popular culture, advertising, news and sports coverage, film and television entertainment. In this respect the representations he analyses are distinct from strategic communication that aims to motivate specific change within its target audience. Constructivist approaches to representation and the tools for analysis they suggest can apply equally well to strategic communication as in the work of Nandita Dogra, however within this theme we ask you to consider the possibilities and limitations of entertainment or news media that do not have an explicit social change agenda.

Hall’s work here address primarily content that was produced before the time that the internet and associated digital cultures became so dominant. Within this theme one might consider what are the continuities and what significant shifts have taken place since 1997 when this work was first published. Andrea Cornwall writes that "Digital stories, participatory photography and video, blogs and zines all offer modes of communicative intervention" (2016, p. 154), and that they offer "representations that those who have conventionally been the object of development communications are producing for themselves" (ibid).

Conrwall's work addresses gender issues specifically where as Hall’s work addresses representations of race. An essay within this theme may choose to address representations of gender or race or class, or consider the intersection of two or more of these categories.

*Working within this theme you may also wish to consider representations of difference and power in other areas. Another example of an emerging field within ComDev and Social Change is disability and its representation. Here one might also consider the intersections of disability with gender or race or class, or consider disability as a primary area of enquiry.

Key References:

Clark , Rosemary (2016) Hope in a hashtag: the discursive activism of #WhyIStayed, Journal of Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2016.1138235 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1138235

Cornwall, Andrea (2016) Save us from Saviours: Disrupting Development Narratives of the Rescue and Uplift of the ‘Third World Woman’ in Hemer, Oscar and Thomas Tufte (Eds.) (2016) Voice and Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return. Gothenburg: Nordicom

Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989) Demarlginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics in University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: h p://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8

*Dogra, Nandita (2012) Representations of Global Poverty: Aid, Development and International NGOS. I. B. Tauris, London.

Hall, Stuart (2013 [1997]) The Work of Representation in Hall, Stuart, Evans, Jessica and Nixon, Sean (Eds.) (2013) Representation. Second Edition. London: Sage. Chapter 1 pp. 1-47

Hall, Stuart (2013 [1997]) The Spectacle of the Other n in Hall, Stuart, Evans, Jessica and Nixon, Sean (Eds.) (2013) Representation. Second Edition. London: Sage. Chapter 4 pp.215-271 (uploaded in two parts Chapter 4 pt1 and Chapter 4 pt2)

hooks, bell (1992) "Introduction", and "Eating the Other", pp. 1-8, 21-39 in bell hooks: Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.

*Lewis, David; Rodgers, Dennis & Michael Woolcock (2014) Popular Representations of Development: Insights from novels, films. television and social media. London: Routledge.

Steiner, Linda (2014) Feminist Media Theory in Fortner, Robert S. and P. Mark Fackler (Eds.) (2014) The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory Wiley. pp. 359 - 378