ECREA16-Abstract

Thursday, November 10

1 6 : 3 0 – 1 8 : 0 0

CDE07

The 'Turn to Practice' inMedia Research: Implications for the Study of Social Movements, Alternative and Citizens' Media

H. Stephansen

, E. Treré

University of Westminster, Department of History- Sociology & Criminology, London, United Kingdom

Scuola Normale Superiore, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Florence, Italy

Panel organisers: Hilde Stephansen and Emiliano Treré. Discussant: Nick Couldry. Recent years have witnessed a ‘turn to practice’in media research that has

focused attention on the social contexts in which media are produced, consumed and circulated, and the complex intersections between media practices

and other social practices (Couldry 2004, 2012). Such a practice framework promises to enable an understanding of media that moves beyond political

economy and textual research, to produce a more socially grounded understanding of the media’s significance in contemporary societies. This move to prac‑

tice has been taken up by scholars studying the relationship between social movements and media, as a means of developing non-media-centric analyses

of the emancipatory potential (or otherwise) of activists’media use (for a review see Mattoni & Treré 2014). Highlighting the wide range of media practices

that activists engage in, such work has sought to produce more nuanced analyses of the intersections between movements and media than those provided

by one- dimensional accounts of ‘Twitter revolutions’ or ‘Facebook revolutions’ that emphasise platform affordances and technological novelty. This recent

scholarship resonates with a longer tradition of work on alternative and citizens’media that has focused attention on the social relationships, organisational

processes and forms of prefigurative politics that underpin such media (Atton 2002, Downing 2001, Rodríguez 2001). The aim of this panel is to advance

scholarship in this area by providing a forum for dialogue about the significance of ‘practice’ for research on activist media and communication for social

change. It will bring together scholars working across fields including social movement media, alternative/citizens’ media and communication for social

change, in order to identify linkages, commonalities and fault lines. While there is now a sizeable literature in these fields that in various ways deals with

media practices, each field has followed its own trajectory. This panel aims to facilitate dialogue among scholars working in different traditions by raising

key questions about the significance of the turn to practice. How might we conceptualise ‘practice’? What theoretical frameworks are most appropriate for

studying the practices of media activists? Can a practice paradigm provide a common framework for research on social movements and media, activists/

citizens’media and communication for social change? The panel features both conceptual and empirically based papers offering historical perspectives on

practice approaches and activist media practices; conceptualisations of the relationship between media practitioners and their publics; analyses of media

practices in contemporary social movements and reflections on the relationship between media practices and technology.

PN 135

The Resurgence of a Practice Approach, and the Implications for Research and Practice in Communication for Social Change

T. Tufte

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

This paper explores the history and development of a practice approach in both research about and the practice of communication for social change. Firstly

it looks back at the‘first wave’of practice approaches (1980s and early 1990s). It then reviews the‘second wave’that has emerged around social movements’

communication practice. Based on these reviews, the paper develops a framework of analysis embedded in a practice approach and with which we critically

can assess the challenges that institutions communicating for social change are faced with today. Firstly, the paper reviews the cultural turn in the social

sciences of the 1980s and early 1990s, as expressed for example in the ‘qualitative turn’ of audience studies within media and communication research.

Key attention was upon the socio-cultural contexts in which media were produced, consumed and circulated, and many studies delved into the complex

relations between media practices and other social practices. This was particularly seen within media ethnographic studies. Already by 1988, James Lull

spoke of ethnography as an ‘abused buzzword’in media and communication scholarship engaged in qualitative audience research. Anthropologists at that

time, with a few exceptions, had yet to discover media and communication studies. This first wave of practice approaches to media research impacted upon

development cooperation and on the field of communication for development and social change. Attention shifted from a focus on top down strategies

of communication and development to local community initiatives and participatory communication practices. Participatory communication practices

were by scholars increasingly regarded as processes of democratization and empowerment. However, despite a growing academic discourse around par‑

ticipatory communication and the call to understand these media processes, this early ‘turn to practice’remained marginal both in the research into and in

the communicative practice of institutions communicating for development and social change. As this paper subsequently explores, a new situation has

today emerged within communication for social change, inspired by the communicative practice of social movements.While retrieving some of the debates

from the early turn to practice, this paper will secondly conduct a critical review of this new academic attention to the relation between media practices and

processes of empowerment and social change. What sort of findings are emerging from the practice-oriented studies of social movements’communication

for social change and how can some of these insights serve to revisit the conceptual approach to communication for social change as it is manifested in large

NGOs, governments and UN agencies?The growing critical stand to the dominating neo-liberal development discourse has led to a strong call for alternative

epistemologies of development and social change. Communication for social change is to some degree responding to this call. However, is the increased

opening towards social change from the perspective of the subaltern and often radical participatory approaches to development leading to a stronger

grounding of a practice approach in today’s research and practice of communication for social change?