Abstract
Thomas Tufte is known well globally for his work in communication for social change or communication for development (C4D). He co-edited the Anthology of Communication for Social Change with Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron, a publication that brought together more than 160 researchers from around the world. Tufte is currently director of Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University.
Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective embraces these prior journeys and presents fundamental reflections and critiques of some approaches from the past and the present regarding the interplay of communication and development.
As the author admits, the work has the magnitude, and the structure, I would say, of a doctoral dissertation. It has eight chapters, as well as more than fifteen pages of references, which offers the idea of the density of the data and the extent of the research.
Tufte questions various communication and development concepts using Alain Touraine and Thomas Piketty to challenge what we mean by “development” in our society. He challenges how we are measuring development and, among other things, presents the example of Bhutan, a Buddhist society that measures development by the happiness of its people. Critically, he acknowledges the position of social movements in this context and the claims they are fighting for, as well as the organization (and expansion) of a civil society that brings with it a pressure for social accountability and a change from service delivery to advocacy. I would say that here he puts his finger in the wound and points, based on numerous studies, at big issues in how the political, cultural, and mediatic contexts have been treated and taken into consideration in Communication for Social Change. The corpus brings historical models and graphs of C4D and social change, it analyzes discourses used in history of C4D, it deepens reflections about participation at all levels, it unpacks social movements’ roles and the way they communicate and use media, and it criticizes the approach of what is understood as development. Also, Tufte presents the challenges of a pro-poor communication, a bottom-up system, and a social-centric process instead of a media-centric process. Empirically speaking, he uses the analysis of the Indignados in Spain; the Mídia Ninja organization and Participatory Budget in Porto Alegre, Brazil; and UNICEF’s shift in its communication model.
His provocation aims at scholars and researchers, and although he states this in the beginning, it is also clear by the way the book is written. As his intention is to challenge mainly the direction of how C4D is being studied and done, the number of authors and theories that tie his proposal together is high and broad. Prior studies and other researchers’ works are the start for each argument, but they are stated in a brief manner. This means that if the reader is not from the field or has not read some of the authors, it is easy to get lost. On the other hand, the book can serve as an amazing guide for those who study development, participation, social movements, governance (cultures of, according to the author), and media and social media because it presents theories from different countries, contexts, and approaches.
It can be easy for the reader to assume that Tufte would be talking about contexts and societies he does not know deeply. However, as a Brazilian researcher involved in many Latin American and Iberian studies, I was surprised to note an accurate and specific interpretation of the context, one that explains that researchers from Brazil avoid the term “development” because this term was used by the dictatorship. Tufte recognizes that the concept of “popular communication” is used in Brazil, whereas “communication for social change” is what is studied and practiced in other parts of the globe. He also points out that the lack of translation into English of works developed in Latin American countries holds back a number of studies that could be researched. Maybe that was the reason Tufte used Paulo Freire’s logic to explain the citizen perspective, but did not use Mario Kaplun’s cassette-foro as an example of participation of bottom-up and social-centric organizations. Kaplun was cited as one of the Latin American authors who brought participatory logics to communication, but Tufte could have used Kaplun’s legacy to refine some of the reflections related to the citizen perspective on communication and social change.
I would question the representation of “communication movements” which, according to the author, have media- and communication-centric strategies and tech-savvy users. It seems that “communication” is understood as digital and online, but through history, social movements have used whatever was available, including printed signs, flyers, or TV ads; and they were never called “communication movements.” What has changed?
It is worth highlighting the concept of “Culture of Governance” that pairs with “Cibercultur@” from Jorge Gonzalez, a model of governance that is not one-size-fits-all but is built by the community and respects long-term relationships, that survives between the global constraints of media and social power, and that centers around information dissemination and community-produced knowledge acting at the local level.
The challenge that remains is how to shift directions and make this citizen perspective happen.