The right of Thomas Tufte to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2017 by Polity Press

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Foreword

By Silvio Waisbord

Everything we knew about the nexus between communication and social change is up for grabs. Technological and social innovations constantly bring up new themes and questions and nudge us to rethink arguments about how and why communication matters for social change.

Even as more than half of the world does not use the Internet, digital technologies have upended traditional media industries and ushered in revolutionary forms of communication. The traditional divisions between interpersonal and mass, private and public, hierarchical and horizontal, one-way and multiple-way communication are no longer tenable. Digitalization has reshaped social interactions and deepened the mediatization of society. From reasonable debate to emotional discourse, the politics of voice are common despite concentrated economic power and elite politics. Just as digital technologies are used by power to enhance profit-making and surveillance, they are also utilized to monitor power and hold it accountable. The proliferation of communication platforms has spawned the disaggregation of the public spheres in multiple, parallel and scattered spaces.

Just like communicative transformations, social change is everywhere. Noisy, messy offline and digital activism attests to the vitality and unpredictability of politics. Organized publics mobilize to express demands and redress inequalities. Participation is not confined to specific, time-bound moments such as elections and referenda, but is a fixture of everyday life. Citizen participation and social mobilization facilitated by digital networks have shaken up the institutional architecture of liberal democracy and authoritarian regimes. The gradual incorporation of consultative mechanisms and citizens into public debates and policy-making in several countries attests to democratic governance in flux.

Significant advances in human rights in the past decades, too, reflect positive social changes. Even in a deeply unequal world, social movements have succeeded in several areas, such as women’s and children’s rights, political representation, cultural pluralism, sexual diversity and communication rights. In past decades, progress in girls’ education, global public health and poverty reduction offer glimmers of hopes about social justice.

Amid progress, reactionary backlash often rears its ugly head. Recurrent episodes of xenophobia, racism, sexism and political persecution are symptomatic of deep-seated forms of hatred. Intolerance is not exclusive to one corner of the world. The politics of hate and bigotry have no borders. Globally, large segments of the public stubbornly refuse to recognize diversity and human rights and cling to old orders. Governments of various ideological stripes resort to assorted tactics to curb or eliminate dissent. Opportunist demagogues whip up intolerance by appealing to the worst angels of our nature.

Against this backdrop, it is clear that no gain on the side of social justice is ever secured. Blowback is always a possibility. Excessive optimism is unwarranted.

This mixed picture of social change comes as no surprise. As a long line of progressive activists has contended, the betterment of the human condition is not a straightforward, sure-footed process. It is dotted with ups and downs, steps forward and backwards. Actions in support of emancipation are bound to run up against established powers and nostalgia for a world of social hierarchies and privileges of class, race, ethnicity, gender, nationalism, sexuality and religion. Sepia-tinted sentiments dangerously infuse resentment and reactionary politics in a world of rapid, constant changes.

Understanding the multiple dimensions of fast-moving social and communication transformations is challenging. The complexity and chaos of contemporary global societies make it difficult to produce neat and comprehensive accounts. Making sense of academic dispersion and turbocharged changes demands a panoramic view and considerable intellectual heft.

This book gets us closer to a better comprehension of scholarly debates about communication, collective action and social change. Thomas Tufte offers a valuable roadmap, packed with insightful, sophisticated and provocative ideas. He is a voracious reader and a thoughtful interpreter of debates and developments. The book deftly walks the reader through a dense theoretical maze – from modernization to post-colonialism. It exhibits a cosmopolitan sensibility that nimbly swings from Europe to Latin America to Africa, and taps into Tufte’s vast research experience that blends academic analysis and ethnographic work in the global South.

The book connects scattered literatures in order to build a fresh argument. Doing this is not easy considering that ‘communication and social change’ includes myriad lines of research – from digital insurgency to community dialogue, from aid/development programmes to information campaigns, from social movements to media criticism. Making sense of this intellectual smorgasbord demands familiarity with different bodies of research. Tufte takes a bird’s-eye perspective to make sense of a fuzzy field that overlaps intellectual and disciplinary traditions. He is not interested in repeating complacent, dogmatic approaches or rehashing tired debates about theoretical models and research paradigms. Instead, he brings together studies around the notion of citizen-driven changes, and shows that, time and time again, citizens are the protagonists of communication actions responsible for progressive change.

Tufte makes a call to put communicative citizenship at the centre of the analysis. Communication is another word for debate and collective action; it is not synonymous with information, public relations, branding, and the kind of ‘magic thinking’ common in the aid industry. The book provides plenty of examples showing that mobilized citizens and critical communication drive changes. It reminds us to be sceptical of ‘silver bullets’ that capture the ever-fleeting attention of aid agencies, corporate philanthropy and non-governmental organizations. Citizens are the true agents of change as they express demands, outline actions, criticize power, pressure governments and international agencies, draft proposals and so on. Yet the analysis does not offer a sentimental view of citizenship. Rather, it proposes a sober, clear-eyed view of when and why citizen participation makes a positive difference. Espousing an agency-centred view of communication and social change is essential, but we should not ex ante praise collective action. Not every form of participation necessarily contributes to progressive changes. Citizens can come together to achieve virtuous changes or push progress back. However, as Tufte shows, long-lasting, progressive social transformation necessarily demands citizenship.

In sum, the book makes a persuasive, evidence-based call to scholars, students, agencies and practitioners to focus on how communication processes articulate citizenship and positive social change. Tufte challenges us to think critically and to find analytical bridges between various streams of communication research. This is necessary to comprehend multiple dimensions of social change and inform practice.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book about communication and social change today is like running a marathon where the ‘finish line’ keeps moving and you can never really reach the end. We are living at a time of continuous and profound change in society. Technological, political and social transformations constantly influence citizens’ everyday lives and in particular their opportunities to engage in social change processes. Understanding these processes, and the role of communication herein, was at the core of this book project.

I have often felt that, and experienced how, governments and the organizations involved in international development cooperation contain a degree of inertia at their core, in the way they communicate to and with their constituencies. This has often limited and constrained the opportunities and abilities of citizens to participate in social processes influencing their own lives. At the same time, non-governmental organizations and social movements in particular have seemed to offer a more dynamic space for citizens to claim voice and visibility and engage in social change processes. However, as this book shows, the equation is not that simple.

This has in many ways felt like a seminal book for me to write. I have long experience of work as a researcher, consultant and co-director of the Ørecomm Centre for Communication and Glocal Change, as well as in teaching and lecturing in many countries and contexts. With this book, I have tried to pull together my research interests and lines of experience to offer my take on how to understand the current challenges facing, and opportunities for, successful citizen-led processes of social change. The world has changed a great deal since Andrea Drugan at Polity first contacted me back in 2011, and many people have helped me understand these changes and translate them into the analytical debates and insights offered in this book.

I would like to thank my co-director at Ørecomm, Oscar Hemer, for having read and commented on the full manuscript, but also for our many valuable debates about communication and social change over the years. Likewise Colin Chasi, with whom I have kept up an ongoing and inspiring dialogue throughout these years. Teke Ngomba, Morten Giersing and Leo Custodio have all read sections of the manuscript. All their comments were thoughtful and constructive, challenged me on my analysis and perspectives, and helped me improve the manuscript. In the process I have also had valuable student assistance from Sara Gevnoe Rasmussen, Charlotte Marie Hermann and Carlos Manuel Moraleda Melero.

Many other students and colleagues have been both helpful and inspirational. Numerous lectures given, doctoral courses taught and conference presentations offered across Latin America, Africa and Europe have offered me opportunities to broaden my perspective and enrich my analysis. This process has in particular involved students and colleagues at the University of Tirana, Albania; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; the University of Johannesburg; Moi University, Kenya; Universidad del Este, Paraguay; Universidade Metodista and ESPM, both in São Paulo, Brazil; Universidad del Norte, Colombia; and Universidad de Aguascalientes, Mexico. The entire argument about contesting ethnocentrism and criticizing the Western concept of development, which I make in this book, has grown out of my constant exposure to many different realities and ways of thinking. My thanks to all of you who were part of this ongoing dialogue.

In the world of organizations carrying out practical work on communication and social change, I found a lot of expertise on, and many insights into, how to translate concepts and approaches into practice and how practice can and must influence research. My year-long collaborations with Femina HIP in Tanzania, ADRA Denmark and ADRA Malawi, Soul City in South Africa and UNICEF, with Rafael Obregon in particular, were all extremely important parts of the process of writing this book. Numerous conversations, interviews and focus group discussions with citizens throughout the countries I have worked with helped to remind me of the need to ground the debates about communication and social change in the everyday lives of people, in the realities of people living and organizations working at community level.

Writing this manuscript also required silence and space for reflection. A month-long stay with Víctor Marí Sáez at the University of Cadiz in 2012 produced excellent discussions and time for immersion. The latter was also possible during a similar stay at the Danish Institute in Rome in 2014. Two shorter stays at Klitgården in Skagen in 2014 and 2016 offered similar opportunities for immersion, as have numerous stays in Birte’s safe havens in Sejrobugten and Portugal. My thanks to all who helped carve out these quiet spaces for me to reflect and write.

In pulling this all together as a book manuscript, thanks are also due to the anonymous peer reviewers, for their comments, and not least to the great and patient team at Polity – from the initial collaboration with Andrea Drugan to the further work with Elen Griffiths, Ellen MacDonald-Kramer and their colleagues in the production team. A special thanks goes to Andrew Mash, who read and reread all the drafts of the manuscript prior to its final submission to Polity, showing me the hard way just how difficult it is to write perfect English.

A special mention must go to Roskilde University and Malmö University, the two universities that constitute the institutional base for Ørecomm, which Oscar and I have co-directed since its inception in 2008. For many years Ørecomm constituted my home base for engagement and reflection in the field of communication and social change. I wish to thank the core Ørecomm team in recent years: Marie, Norbert, Jonas, Nina, Yuliya, Anders, Micke, Hugo, Ronald, Kathrine and Tobias, who all contributed to the realization of the Ørecomm Festivals and Symposia held in 2011–16. The Centre has been a base for international debate with researchers, practitioners, artists, students and consultants interested in understanding and engaging with communication and social change from a citizen perspective. This interest and commitment I have also found at my base at the University of Leicester. Thanks to all of you who have taken part.

Finally, I wish to dedicate this book to Laura, Anna and Pernille. Without your patience, support and smiles, this book would never have been written.

Leicester

6 December 2016

Communication and Social Change

A Citizen Perspective

Foreword

Acknowledgments