Articles authored by Dagron, Alfonso Gumucio

Communication and its role in development and social change is still poorly understood and supported by large development players, despite decades of innovative practice and positive outcomes. Gaps between discourse and action, outdated evaluation methods, short timeframes, red tape, and power relations, combined with vertical and externally-driven communication models, and confusion between information and communication, all prevent development donors from giving support to participatory and community owned and managed communication initiatives.

Citizens’ media and communication are still poorly understood in the mainstream of development policy and practice – and are prone to simplistic forms of implementation, because of the lack of a coherent grasp of the social, cultural, and political processes that make them transformative. Introducing the articles in this guest issue, the authors find that citizens’ media is about more than bringing diverse voices into pluralist politics: it contributes to processes of social and cultural construction, redefining norms and power relations that exclude people.