In May 2015 the journal Communication Theory published a special issue entitled âAdvocacy and Communication for Social Changeâ, guest edited by Karin Wilkins and Jan Servaes. In one of the articles, Rico Lie and Jan Servaes declared:
We have come a long way in mainstreaming Communication for Development and Social Change. The field has nurtured its own disciplinary groundings and thematic embedding, has become more or less coherent, is recognized and acknowledged within the wider community of scholars and professionals, and is establishing its own historical roots in theory and practice. The field remains dynamic and has not settled down in a static way, but on a solid ground, it progresses and expands in critical and creative ways. (Lie and Servaes 2015, 254)
While Lie and Servaes (2015) are correct in many respects in their overall assessment of the state of affairs in this area, it is also evident that the âmainstreamingâ of this field, which has âhistorically straddled academia and the aid industryâ (Waisbord 2015, 144), has been beset by a distinctive paradox in disciplinary institutionalization. This paradox is arguably unique given that, seen from the perspective of academic research, the fieldâs disciplinary identity and core definitions are confused (Waisbord 2005; Servaes and Malikhao 2008; Wilkins 2009; Ngomba 2013; Thomas 2014) but, at the same time, the field itself is increasingly popular among a range of scholars and institutions (Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte 2006; Hemer and Tufte 2012). As a field of practice within the âdevelopment industryâ it is widely recognized rhetorically as important, but in practice it is consistently misunderstood and often underappreciated by development agencies (Servaes et al. 2007; Balit 2012; van de Fliert et al. 2014; Waisbord 2015).
Within the last decade, as a sign, perhaps, of both the maturation of the field and also excitement and worries about its current status and future, key publications have appeared that have taken an incisive and âsummativeâ approach to the field as whole (e.g. Hemer and Tufte 2005; Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte 2006; Servaes 2008; Enghel and Wilkins 2012; Wilkins et al. 2014; Thomas 2015) or to particular subdisciplinary aspects, such as health communication (Obregon and Waisbord 2012) or evaluation of communication for social change projects (Lennie and Taachi 2013). While a range of the contributions touch on methodological issues relating to researching communication and social change, to the best of our knowledge there is a significant paucity of books and special issues of journals dedicated to methodological issues in communication and social change research.
This volume seeks, modestly but explicitly, to contribute towards addressing this shortcoming. Prior to outlining the different chapters that make it up, it is important to highlight two points: the genesis of this book and its scope. As concerns its âoriginsâ, in 2009 a group of scholars in Denmark (Roskilde University and Aarhus University) and Sweden (Malmo University) established the Glocal Network on Media and Development (NOMAD). Funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research and led by Thomas Tufte, Glocal NOMAD aimed to create an organized setting for transnational knowledge production in the field of media and communication for development.
As the network came to an end, scholars affiliated with it met in Ystad, Sweden, to deliberate on ways in which they could shape the contours of ongoing academic and policy discussions concerning communication and processes of social change. After a tour dâhorizon of the field, the outcome was a decision to bring together a group of scholars to write a volume focusing on methodological issues as far as communication and social change scholarship is concerned. In inviting scholars to contribute, the editors asked them to âtake a step backâ from their ongoing or past communication and social change research, and to offer critical personal reflections on the methodological choices they made and their implications. The outcome is the nine core chapters that make up this book.
With regard to the scope of the text, the authors and editors discussed how precisely to define the relation between communication and social change, and thus to reflect on the fieldâs core terms, as evolved in recent years from a field of research and practice, most commonly subsumed under the label of âdevelopment communicationâ. Akin, though less prevalent, appellations making the rounds were âcommunication for developmentâ; âinformation, education and communicationâ; and âsocial marketing and participatory communicationâ. Together we have decided to use âcommunication and social changeâ in the title of this volume, as a pragmatic umbrella term that encapsulates the broad domain of research on the interlinkages between media, communication and diverse processes of political, social, cultural and economic change.
In recognition of the diversity that continues to characterize the field, we have nonetheless supported the authors in situating their methodological reflections within the appellation they deem most appropriate for their work. In this regard, while Chiara Milan and Stefania Milan talk about âcommunication for development and social changeâ in Chap. 2 and Jonas AgerbĂŚk uses the term âcommunication for/and social changeâ in Chap. 4, Oscar Hemer refers to âcommunication for developmentâ in Chap. 9.
Concerning another dimension of diversityânamely thematic and methodological diversityâthe different chapters are deliberately wide-ranging with regard to the particular objects that they engage with and their specific research methodologies. Lie and Servaes (2015, 244) recently pointed out that there are several âsub-disciplines of Communication for Development and Social Changeâ. These, as they indicate, include health communication; risk communication; development journalism; and agricultural extension and rural communication. Such significant disciplinary diversity implies, methodologically speaking, that the field is further differentiated (see Fair and Shah 1997; Ogan et al. 2009; Shah 2010). As discussed below, the nine core chapters in their sum, at least to some extent, reflect on the outlined comprehensive thematic and methodological range of communication and social change.
The main discussions are opened by Chiara Milan and Stefania Milan (Chap. 2), who offer what they call a âready-to-use community engagement checklistâ for research in the field of communication for social change. This checklist, based largely on the authorsâ research experiences with community radio stations across the world and rural communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, touches on key research processes and includes issues such as identification and articulation of the relevance of research to the researched communities, and negotiations of power relations between researchers and the researched communities. In discussing these issues through what they call the STRAP framework, Milan and Milan contend that the suggested approach should be seen as a form of âengaged researchâ which, without departing from the systematic demands of proper social scientific research, has the potential to âmake a difference for disempowered communities and people beyond the academic communityâ. They invite scholars into a process of âmoral positioning of epistemologies and methodologiesâ as they think more critically about why, how and for whom research in communication and social change is carried out.
Following with a similar line of reflection, Poul Erik Nielsen (Chap. 3) draws from his experiences in three projects in Mongolia and Laos to address methodological challenges related to âthe introduction and implementation of Northern-informed methodologies in the Global Southâ. He engages with the longstanding epistemological debate about positivism through a âradical poststructuralist or postmodern approachâ in which he looks back at projects in Mongolia and Laos and asks, âto what extent do the projects provide relevant knowledge on a pre-existing reality or to what extent do the projects construct social realities based on the established knowledge?â In engaging with these issues and delving into the political economy of consultancies and knowledge generation in communication and social change scholarship, he shows how a core question worth asking consistently in communication and social change research is: âwho wants to know what and why?â
Jonas AgerbĂŚk (Chap. 4) introduces the potential of a participatory method of research called ROAR. Developed during his fieldwork in Malawi, Jonas shows how through the method, local social change radio stories (nthano) which addressed critical issues of collective concern were created by the villagers. His contribution, grounded theoretically in discussions of âcitizensâ mediaâ and âdialogic democracyâ, provides a telling indication of the importance of indigenous knowledge, as well as the values and challenges of supporting the âcommunicative capabilitiesâ of citizens through local and culturally relevant participatory approaches.
Linje Manyozo (Chap. 5) continues this line of reflection on indigenous knowledge from two other African countries: Botswana and South Africa. He engages with the theoretical underpinnings and methodological practices of ethnographic photography through a reflection of the use of photo elicitation in the study of the â Khomani San of the Southern Kalahari. Manyozo examines the âfactors that shape the production and consumption of photographic representations of other culturesâ, in particular, issues of power and agency. On these latter points he discusses the ways and extent to which âthe majority of oppressed and subaltern groupsâ can âspeak backâ, especially in contemporary contexts of digitalizing media landscapes.
The discussions about a communityâs engagement with its mediated depictions, introduced by Manyozo, are taken further by Lajos Varhegyi, Richard Ndunguru, Søren Sønderstrup and Anders Høg Hansen (Chap....