Development in Practice Special Issue: Citizen's Media and Communication

In the introduction to this special issue of the journal Development in Practice, or DIP, (Vol. 19, No. 4&5), guest editors Jethro Pettit, Juan Francisco Salazar, and Alfonso Gumucio Dagron argue that citizens' media and communication are still poorly understood in the mainstream of development policy and practice. The examples and analyses in this issue seek to foster a more coherent grasp of the social, cultural, and political processes that make citizens' media transformative by "redefining norms and power relations that exclude people. Local ownership and control of their own media can allow people to reshape the spaces in which their voices find expression."

Contents:

"Citizens' media and communication" - Jethro Pettit, Juan Francisco Salazar, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron

Section I: Understandings of Media, the State, and the Public Sphere

• "Playing with Fire: Power, Participation, and Communication for Development" - Alfonso Gumucio Dagron
• "Negotiating Power: Community Media, Democracy, and the Public Sphere" - Saima Saeed
• "'Neither Silent nor Invisible': Anti-poverty Communication in the San Francisco Bay Area" - Dorothy Kidd, Bernadette Barker-Plummer
• "From Mouthpiece to Public Service: Donor Support to Radio Broadcasters in New Democracies" - Simon Milligan, Graham Mytton
  

Section II: Experiences of Indigenous Peoples' Media

• "Self-Determination in Practice: The Critical Making of Indigenous Media" - Juan Francisco Salazar
• "Electronic Dreaming Tracks: Indigenous Community Broadcasting in Australia" - Michael Meadows
• "Radio, Control, and Indigenous Peoples: The Failure of State-invented Citizens' Media in Mexico" - Antoni Castells-Talens, José Manuel Ramos Rodríguez, Marisol Chan Concha

Section III: Media and Communication as Methods of Transformation

• "Transforming Images: Reimagining Women's work through Participatory Video" - Usha Sundar Harris
• "Theatre for Transformation and Empowerment: A Case Study of Jana Sanskriti Theatre of the Oppressed" - Sandra Mills
• "Sexual-Health Communication across and within Cultures: The Clown Project, Guatemala" - Anthony Savdié, Andrew Chetley

Section IV: Media and Voice in Development Practice

• "Participatory Content Creation: Voice, Communication, and Development" - Jo Tacchi, Jerry Watkins, Kosala Keerthirathne
• "Mobile Phones and Community Development: A Contact Zone between Media and Citizenship" - Gerard Goggin, Jacqueline Clark

Section V: Community Radio and Citizen Voice

• "Four Steps to Community Media as a Development Tool" - Stefania Milan
• "Rebel Voices and Radio Actors: In Pursuit of Dialogue and Debate in Northern Uganda" - Maggie Ibrahim
• "Transforming Public Space: A Local Radio's Work in a Poor Urban Community" - Dora Navarro

Section VI: The Role of Media in Social Movements

• "Moved to Act: Communication Supporting HIV Social Movements to Achieve Inclusive Social Change" - Robin Vincent, Lucy Stackpool-Moore
• "The State of the Art in Citizens' Communication for Social Change in Spain" - Alejandro Barranquero
• "Citizens' Publications that Empower: Social Change for the Homeless" - Claudia Magallanes-Blanco, Juan Antonio Pérez-Bermúdez

Section VII: Participatory Communication in Research

• "Creating Knowledge for Action: The Case for Participatory Communication in Research" - Laura Cornish, Alison Dunn
• "Giving Voice: Instigating Debate on Issues of Citizenship, Participation, and Accountability" - Samuel Ayedime Kafewo

As part of an endeavour to support and highlight Conversations with the Earth (CWE), an indigenous-led multimedia campaign to amplify indigenous voices on climate change, DIP is enabling - for a limited time (through April 30 2010) - free full-text access and reduced price print copies of the above-described special issue. CWE is a collaboration between indigenous communities, journalists, photographers, designers, and participatory video facilitators. In Copenhagen, Denmark, at the December 2009 UN [United Nations] Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties meeting (COP15), CWE shared its work through live presentations by representatives of several indigenous communities. As part of its efforts to highlight CWE's work, DIP is providing details about, and links to, indigenous participatory videos: click here to access these supplementary materials. (Various links are included toward the bottom of the page, including: full-text access to articles; summaries of the articles in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish; an online forum; the Indigenous Peoples' Issues website; the CWE website; the Media Hubs Newsletter; and the InsightShare website.)

When the promotion period ends (May 1 2010), those who are not DIP subscribers (click here for details) can:

• Pay for the articles individually. The full-text articles and the reduced-price single issue are available for sale from the DIP page on the Taylor & Francis website.
• Visit ELDIS, which provides unrestricted full-text access to articles published in DIP, and also hosts a Development in Practice Discussion Group which enables readers to comment on and discuss issues arising from each article.