Commons. Revista de Comunicación y Ciudadanía Digital

De-constructing participatory communication and civil society development in 2020: a perspective inspired by Paulo Freire / Deconstruyendo la comunicación participativa y el desarrollo de la sociedad civil en 2020: una perspectiva inspirada en Paulo Freire

Thomas Tufte — 2020-12-21

This article explores the “mindprint” of Paulo Freire upon processes of social change in Brazil, with a particular focus on how his liberating pedagogy has influenced practices of participatory communication and civil society development. In exploring the legacy of Freire, his work is approached from the perspective of communication. This constitutes an original contribution as it positions Freire’s work within a communication epistemology and his vision as one of communication. A brief rigorous review is conducted of the history and development of citizen engagement in Brazil from the 1950s until 2020, identifying key phases of democratic development, and the legacy of Freire herein assessed. It is found that rather than representing specific policies or formal educational projects, Paulo Freire has become a key symbol and inspiration that has influenced a broad gamut of civil society, and continues, in a variety of forms and contexts, to inspire social change processes in Brazil.

Conocer es actuar. Entre la epistemología genética y el legado de Paulo Freire / Knowing is acting. Between genetic epistemology and Paulo Freire's legacy

Jorge A. González — 2020-12-21

The key of knowledge construction has to do with empowering people. Especially those who have been “designed” and treated as merely objects of study and not as active subjects of knowledge. That is one of the most important outcomes of Paulo Freire’s legacy, not only in Brazil, but in the world. But, what does it mean to become “subjects of knowledge”? The social actors who can confront their problems by mean of the construction of their own knowledge, do they really become empowered? The theory and findings granted from Genetic Epistemology, gives us a powerful theoretical and methodological tool for understanding the experiences of “conscientization” as processes of empowering. Freirean method for literacy can be fruitfully interpreted under the light of a scientific theory of the processes of knowledge construction. In studying and practicing Communication for Development, I claim that Information, Communication and Knowledge must be taken as a crucial threefold, non-separable process that includes simultaneously biological, behavioural and social transformations, especially those that have been collectively created. These transformations improve both, individual and group capacity to differentiate and integrate (that means, “knowing”) their experiences of the world, and by doing that, empower their capacity of acting, confronting and overcome their social conditions.

The Views of the Youth on the Potential for Dialogue by Means of Digital Media through Paulo Freire’s Perspective / Las visiones de los jóvenes sobre el potencial de los medios digitales para el diálogo desde la mirada de Paulo Freire

Cássia Ayres — 2020-12-21

This article seeks to analyse the perceptions of a group of young Brazilians digital media users, on the role of the Internet as a means to facilitating dialogue between them and their elected representatives in the political sphere, based on the presuppositions of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. The methodology focused on the use of qualitative approaches which involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews with thirteen young people from São Paulo and Bahia who participate in the online political participation program, U Report. The findings suggest that the Internet is seen as having a limited role in dialogic processes by those interviewed, who also demonstrate that they are aware of the national situation and the structuring mechanisms of digital media.

Connections with Paulo Freire’s legacy in anti-racism media activist collaboration in Finland / Conexiones con el legado de Paulo Freire en la colaboración mediactivista antirracismo en Finlandia

Leonardo Custódio — 2020-12-21

In this article, we introduce the Finland-based initiative Anti-Racism Media Activist Alliance (ARMA Alliance, 2018-2020). The article presents our ethical- methodological reflections about the processes of collaboration and dialogue we have experienced as co-founders and coordinators of ARMA Alliance. Our analysis is grounded on our joint retrospective analysis of how the activist-research purposes of ARMA Alliance connect with Paulo Freire’s legacy. Our objective is to contribute to scholarship that problematizes the multi-layered relationship between research and activism in collaborative processes of communication for social change (in our case, against racism). First, we present what the ARMA Alliance initiative means and how it connects with Paulo Freire’s work. Then, we look back at the decolonial insights, cathartic encounters and dialogues that led to the development of the initiative. After that, we reflect about the relationship between collaboration and conscientization. Lastly, we indicate some experiences in putting dialogue and collaboration into practice.

Aspiraciones progresistas, dispositivos conservadores: multiculturalismo, nueva museología y Paulo Freire / Progressive discourses, conservative devices: multiculturalism, new museology and Paulo Freire

Glauber de Lima — 2020-12-21

This paper addresses the political-discoursive use of Paulo Freire’s by the new museology in Brazil. This latter is an approach which embodies a multicultural project to museums. The core argument is that it is a liberal formulation which instrumentalises Freire’s ideas to seems progressive. The discussion grounds itself on textual analyses and political economy. As such, it examines Paulo Freire’s texts, the rhetoric of the Brazilian cultural policy for museums, and museological practices. From these issues, it highlights that this museological view adopted Paulo Freire’s dialogical perspective but, conversely, it overshadowed its materialist criticism. New museology has used Freirian lexicon to define its practices, albeit they have taken form by liberal ethics. In this sense, this work stresses this paradox to point out its effects on the current Brazilian debate on culture and citizenship.

Our collective narrative was being constructed in the film production / Nuestra narrativa colectiva se estaba construyendo en la producción cinematográfica

Elisabet Cerqueira da Conceição — 2020-12-21

This text is based on a conversation between members in the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, a film producer and a media and communication researcher about the production process of the documentary Chão (Landless). Chão documents MST’s processes of land occupation and the battles to gain rights to land in the state of Goiás between 2014 and 2018. MST’s mobilization practices since the emergence of the Movement in 1984 have been much informed by Paulo Freire’s emancipatory pedagogy. The Movement’s historically situated social action constructs knowledge about reality at the same time that it changes reality. The documentary is an example of participatory media production in which the filmmaker and the militants constructed a narrative together from their different perspectives. This participatory process is used here as a departure point to discuss the experiential dynamics of the conscientization process from the different perspectives of research, media production, and militancy.

El legado de Paulo Freire en España / The legacy of Paulo Freire in Spain

Víctor Manuel Marí Sáez — 2020-12-21

Tenemos el gran placer de publicar, en este número de Commons, un monográfico sobre el legado de Paulo Freire en el campo de la Comunicación para el Cambio Social, en el contexto del Brasil de Bolsonaro. A partir del seminario organizado, sobre esta temática, en el campus de Londres de la Universidad de Loughborough (en 2019) ha sido diseñado el número que el lector tiene en sus manos. Ya que los editores invitados profundizan en su artículo en el legado de Freire en el Brasil actual, yo me centraré, en esta introducción, en continuar con el leit-motiv del seminario, pero adaptándolo al contexto español.

Exploring the mediascape from the Epistemologies of the South / Explorando el mediascape desde las Epistemologías del Sur

Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho — 2020-12-21

Dominant literature on media and communication studies has insistently equated mediascape and high technology media as interchangeable concepts and realities instead of high technological media as part of a broader and more dynamic media pallet. By subscribing to this “technology- driven Darwinism”, we argue that existing dominant literature explicitly and implicitly excludes forms of mass communication that go beyond the media in its Western liberal form and procedures and, consequently, other voices, knowledge and messages. This article analyses the modern conception of media by exploring the “abyssal exclusions” (Santos, 2007) it creates. To illustrate this further, we have selected the top five 2018 SCOPUS-indexed journals, from which we gathered a sample of 116 research articles that were published between 2016-2018, to shed light on some of the most recent research trends in media studies. The definition of media used by the articles contained in our sample shows that there is a technological and modernity-driven spectrum which is fundamental in defining what is and what progressively is no longer labelled, and hence considered, media. This understanding of the media fails to include forms of mass communication that go beyond the media in its western liberal form and, consequently, exclude subaltern voices, knowledges and messages.