Un/Making CSC: A critical engagement with Communication for Social ‘Changemaking’

CSC is a field of scholarship and practice within communication studies concerned with the role of media and communication in processes of social change and development. Social entrepreneurship discourses and the broader neoliberalisation of CSC heralds a growing embrace of ‘enlightened capitalism’ as a solution to the failings of development. This worldview mirrors contemporary capitalist cultures and draws on new business management mantras, emphasising optimism, creativity, boldness, leadership and autonomy as an approach to 'changemaking'. This approach is promoted by a growing chorus of philanthropies and private financing entities in the development space. It is also accelerated by significant shifts in the development funding landscape towards increased scarcity and competition for funds. In the face of the highly precarious, dependent and top-down ways of working that characterize current development funding, many CSC practitioners seek alternative approaches that would enable them to determine their own priority actions and approaches, be more bottom up and responsive to local needs, more bottom-up, achieve more sustainable solutions.

However, this trend in the sphere of practice is in stark contrast with the momentum of current debates in academia, where of primary interest is in the role of communication in the resistance of global capitalism and in decolonization agendas. From this perspective, the integration of social entrepreneurship discourses within CSC is a threat to, not an enabler of, social justice. 

Un/Making CSC engages directly with these tensions this project investigating the implications of growing entrepreneurial discourses within communication for social change (CSC) from a practitioner perspective. It will use participatory and visual methods to learn from and with Southern practitioners to explore practitioners’ adaptations of ‘changemaking’ discourses, and collaborates towards generating social justice-driven frameworks for Communication for Social Changemaking. The research will be undertaken in two different settings: youth engagement in Malawi and feminist digital justice efforts in India. The project partners with several well-established CSC organisations with experience of navigating these tensions to co-develop insights, actionable frameworks and policy briefs for a social justice-driven approach to Communication for Social Changemaking.

This research will be conducted over a period of 18 months as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Early Career Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship (grant number AH/W009242/1) and awarded to Dr Jessica Noske-Turner, Senior Lecturer in Media and Creative Industries, and her mentors, Professor Thomas Tufte (Loughborough University London) and Prof. Mufunanji Magalasi (University of Malawi, Chancellor College). The study is conducted in collaboration with the Creative Centre for Community Mobilisation (CRECCOM), Youth Net and Counselling (YONECO), and IT for Change.