Developing Moral Sensitivity Throgh Protest Scenarios in International NGDOs' Communication

This paper studies advertising campaigns of NGDOs by applying the innovative concepts of protest communication scenarios and moral sensitivity. Its main purpose is to advance current understanding on how two conceptually different communication scenarios -donor and protest- impact the social engagement of the public. The interdisciplinary methodology combines a discursive and psychological perspective with an empirical survey study designed with the support of cultural discourse analysis (Hall, 1997). The findings demonstrate that using communication models based on the need for collective help for poverty in terms of an unjust situation -what we call a protest communication model- increases moral sensitivity and, therefore, social action. These results are of interest for planning and assessing the organizational communication of NGDOs designed from their educational and social action liabilities. This research shows that utilizing these criteria increases the efficacy of their communication in awareness raising and social engagement without being detrimental to funding amounts

Activism, transmedia storytelling and empowerment

This work explores activism through new media by applying narrative power analysis and story-based strategies for social change. From an interdisciplinary and internationally discussed theoretical and methodological framework based on peace research, communication theories and cultural studies, this paper aims at gathering a series of criteria to critically analyze and assess the new media politics of social movements. Specifically, it reviews a selection of present day activist discourses to propose a communication model defined from culturally effective practices aimed at peace cultures, cultural wisdom and empowerment for conflict transformation. This analysis elaborates on previous empirical research (Pinazo and Nos Aldás, 2013) which tested protest communication scenarios as the more adequate to boost social justice, engagement and empowerment. This text therefore takes as a case study some good practices of transmedia storytelling for social change and, through discourse framing analysis, it develops on how activist empowering frames, values and emotions of social change for social justice are an effective cultural alternative to hegemonic negative frames. All in all, this paper intends to further advance conclusions on new media politics for social justice from the experience of new social movements communicative scenarios of social empowerment through transmedia storytelling

Communication and Engagement for Social Justice

From mass to interpersonal media, from citizen to governmental or corporate interactions, a communication for peaceful social change involves different screens, spaces, creative resources, means of expression and actors. All utterances, all messages, all images – both through direct experience (interpersonal communication) or through representation (mediated communication such as art, media or education) – relate together in the identities of individuals and their participation in private and collective spheres. These communication scenarios can become empowering processes when defined from the agency of individuals and geared towards social justice. The communicative action of present-day citizen movements demonstrates this point. In this light, this essay focuses on communication's role of empowering civil society's participation in transformative political peaceful actions for social justice. We explore how communication can help build awareness of social injustice and jumpstart and maintain such social action through continued engagement. On the one hand, this study aims to better understand how society can become aware of the violent and unjust effects of certain actions, their cultural and symbolic consequences and how they are connected to social injustice, especially of certain communicative behaviors. On the other hand, we promote a communicative and educative project that addresses violence and injustice by developing sensitivity to the suffering of others. We argue that it is this feeling of responsibility that leads people to act in order to eradicate such practice

Communication for Peaceful Social Change and Global Citizenry

The adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 represents a universal call to action involving multiple international actors for the purpose of eradicating poverty, improving living conditions and promoting peace. This entry provides a theoretical overview of the contributions of scholars and practitioners who highlight the importance of a transformative, educational and emancipatory communication by different social actors to establish the main lines of action for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This communicative model involves the coordination of actors and strategies, both short- and long-term, cross-cutting actions and discourses to build social, cultural and political settings based on the criteria of peace, equality, social justice and human rights. Specifically, this entails a contribution to the objectives set out in SDG 16, “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”, given that the proposed theoretical framework is grounded in Communication for Peace and Communication for Social Change, and includes a systematization of different strategies and experiences from a variety of social issuers, mainly institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or social movements, aimed at promoting peaceful and inclusive societies. Specifically, communication for peaceful social change and global citizenry contributes to the achievement of specific SDG 16 objectives, particularly 16.1: Significantly reduce all forms of violence... [...

Communication and activist literacy for social change in feminist movements: The case of 2019 8M women’s strikes in Spain and Portugal

This chapter addresses the role of communication and information practices in recent feminist activism. Specifically, it analyses the case of the 8M women’s strikes in Spain and Portugal in 2019 to gather potential lessons for the non-profit sector and activism in the field of feminisms and diversity. It adopts an activist communication perspective, based on the concept of “cultural efficacy” (Nos-Aldás, 2020), which refers to the shared premise that the core cross-cutting responsibility and main long-term aim is transformative communication above the private or management needs of movements and organizations. On the methodological level, content and discourse analysis is applied to the websites that coordinated the Iberian 8M strikes, using cultural efficacy criteria to discuss how they contribute to the movements' communication and activist practices. The results indicate that there are points in common between feminist activism in Spain and Portugal. Both communicative experiences share discourse traits focused on activist literacy, to trigger collective action for global social justice. They advocate enduring transformation with a nonviolent, transgressive and intersectional approach, enhancing recognition of previous struggles and inspiring alliances. Simultaneously, particularities of each country’s movement are seen in their messages. Police violence in neighborhoods, for instance, stands out as a cause for protest in Portugal, whereas efforts to bond with broad alliances and international networks are salient in Spain

Learning with ‘Generation Like’ about Digital Global Citizenship: A Case Study from Spain

Eloísa Nos Aldás This chapter focuses on the practices and challenges faced by higher education (HE) in order to engage ‘Generation Like’ (Frontline 2014) , the generations who have grown up with social media, in learning to be critical, cosmopolitan and global political subjects. We present here a specific case study based on experience at the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón (UJI) , Spain, in the undergraduate degree course in advertising and public relations at the Department of Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, in the subject of ‘Communication towards Equality’ (one term, fourth year) . This pedagogical project contributes to international discourses on global education (GE) by sharing evidence from an interdisciplinary approach that combines global citizenship education (GCE) with areas of media literacy and communication for social change, to explore and design an innovative syllabus on ‘transgressive communication of social change’. This aims to train future... [...

La imagen transformadora. El poder de cambio social de una fotografía: la muerte de Aylan

Este trabajo plantea el papel de la imagen como agente de transformación social. La metodología que se emplea es un estudio de caso sobre el impacto de la fotografía de Aylan Kurdi, el niño de tres años ahogado en el intento de huida en una balsa de migrantes sirios en Bodrum. Se trata de uno de los documentos recientes de fotoperiodismo social más difundidos transnacionalmente y con gran impacto en redes sociales. El estudio aborda diferentes niveles de análisis (iconográfico, iconológico y ético) para decapar los aspectos constitutivos de una imagen con poder de cambio social. Como principales conclusiones, esta investigación comprueba el poder de la imagen gráfica digital por su carácter de fácil reedición y re-significación en el paso de transformar simbólicamente la realidad y generar procesos de pronunciamiento y activismo en la ciudadanía a partir de entornos digitales. Los resultados del análisis del caso que se delimita muestran cómo el valor de una imagen en el cambio social no viene dado solo por la magnitud de la tragedia o el hecho que registra, ni por sus aspectos formales (iconográficos), sino por ser capaz de expresar un cambio de lógica (aspecto iconológico) y propiciar procesos de reapropiación y denuncia ciudadana. Por último, el debate ético sobre su difusión traslada el problema de la deontología periodística a la responsabilidad ciudadanaThis paper focuses on the role of the image as an agent for social transformation. The methodology adopted is a case study: the impact of the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old child drowned off Bodrum in an attempt to escape on a raft full of Syrian migrants. This is one of the most widely seen social photojournalism documents in recent times, and it had a huge impact on social media. The study applies an iconographic, iconological and ethical analysis to reveal the constituent parts of an image with the power for social change. In its main conclusions, this paper describes the potential for easy resignification of the digital graphic image as it symbolically transforms reality, and the power it has to generate processes of pronouncement and activism among citizens in digital environments. The results of the case study show that the value of an image for social change is achieved not only by the magnitude of the tragedy itself and the information that it registers, or by its formal aspects (iconographic), but mainly by being able to express a change of logic (iconological aspects) and to promote processes of reappropriation and denunciation. The ethical debate on dissemination shifts the problem from journalistic ethics to citizen responsibilit

Communication towards Equality in the European Higher Education

This paper addresses the process of creation and implementation of the subject “Communication towards Equality” at the University Jaume I in Spain, within the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework. The purpose of the paper is to present this experience of University teaching reform as a potential guideline for the implementation of equality in other programs. The EHEA offered challenges and possibilities for University reforms, which included the implementation of capacity-building for students. At the communication programs of our University, the curriculum has included issues of gender equality, aimed at training future professionals towards citizen empowerment. The paper is organized around three sections. First, we present the legal and epistemological framework that sustains our experience. This includes an overview of legal regulations (EHEA, Spanish and international laws) and a revision of the epistemological and methodological background, mainly based on Critical Theory and Pedagogy on communication for social change. Second, we unfold the subject “Communication towards Equality” with its main contents and methodologies. Finally, we draw some reflections on its two years of implementation and the implications for training undergraduate students in communications for social change.This article is part of the research project “Evaluación e indicadores de Sensibilidad Moral en la Comunicación Actual de los Movimientos Sociales” [Evaluation Model and Indicators of Moral Sensitivity in the Communication of Social Movements] (CS02012–34066), funded by the Spanish State Secretary of Research, Development and Innovation of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the research project “De víctimas a indignados: Visibilidad mediática, migración de imágenes, espectacularización de los conflictos y procesos de transformación social hacia una Cultura de Paz” [From victims to indignants: media visibility, migration of images, conflicts spectacularization and social transformation processes for peace culture] (P1-1A2012) funded by the Promotion Plan for Research of the University Jaume I

El movimiento social 15-M de España y la promoción de la protesta a través de sus vídeos en Youtube

The article analyzes the discursive strategies and the impact of eight videos that are posted on YouTube between September 2012 and March 2013 to promote social protests taking place in the city of Madrid. These videos are made by the group audiovisual Toma la Tele and broadcast the calls organized by different groups linked to the 15-M social movement in Spain. Following the analysis it is found that in three videos using violence as a strategy of persuasion.El artículo analiza las estrategias discursivas y el impacto de ocho vídeos que se publicaron en Youtube entre septiembre de 2012 y marzo de 2013 para promocionar las protestas sociales que se desarrollaron en la ciudad de Madrid. Estos vídeos son elaborados por el grupo audiovisual Toma la Tele y difunden las convocatorias organizadas por diferentes colectivos vinculados al movimiento social 15-M en España. Tras el análisis realizado se comprueba que en tres vídeos se utiliza la violencia como estrategia de persuasión