Connective Action for Global Fairness: Building Social Imaginaries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v0i58.111686Keywords:
connective action; communication for social change (CFSC); social imaginaries; global fairness; advocacy; digital interactionAbstract
Social imaginaries are frameworks within which people organise their collective world; where imagination, not simply reason, plays a part in the construction of social practices. Through a grounded theory approach, this article asks whether and how social imaginaries of global fairness are present in connective action, a type of digital interaction for advocacy. From January 2014 to June 2015, the study followed the Facebook accounts of five advocacy organisations: Hivos, Oxfam IBIS, Intermon-Oxfam, SSNC and Vredeseilanden. Connective action, more than just accomplishing an expressing function of posting and sharing – which could be considered as ‘slacktivism’– denotes cooperating and acting by means of dialogic learning involving reflection and action. The research suggests that current social imaginaries may be built in connective action involving topics of nature conservation, equality, eco-farming, among others. Thus, the field of connective action remains open to theorizing how these imaginaries could constitute a strong foundation upon which communication for social change (CFSC) strategies may be grounded.
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Bennett, W. Lance 2005: Social movements beyond borders: understanding two eras of transnational activism. In Della Porta/Tarrow (eds.), Transnational protest and global activism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 203-226.
Bennett, W. Lance/Segerberg, Alexandra 2013: The logic of connective action: digital media and the personalization of contentious politics, Cambridge studies in contentious politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Castoriadis, Cornelius 1987: The Imaginary institution of society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Chaparro, Manuel 2015: Claves para repensar los medios y el mundo que habitamos. La distopia del desarrollo. Bogota: Ediciones desde abajo.
Corbin, Juliet M./Strauss, Anselm L. 2015: Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Cordoba, Diana/Jansen, Kees 2015: Realigning the Political and the Technical: NGOs and the Politicization of Agrarian Development in Bolivia. In European Journal of Development Research advance online publication 19 March 2015.
Davies, Thomas Richard 2014: NGOs: a new history of transnational civil society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Felix 1987: A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Della Porta, Donatella 2009: Global Justice Movement Organisations: The Organisational Population. In Della Porta (ed.), Democracy in Social Movements. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd, 16-43.
Escobar, Arturo 2008: Territories of difference: place, movements, life, redes, New ecologies for the twenty-first century. Durham: Duke University Press.
Flyvbjerg, Bent 2006: Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research In Qualitative Inquiry 12(2), 219-245.
Freire, Paulo 2005: Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Ramos. New York: The Continuum Intl. Publishing Group.
Freire, Paulo 2004: Pedagogy of indignation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Freistein, Katja 2014: Are there any Global Imaginaries of Equality and Democracy in Discussions about Inequality? . In SFB 882 Working Paper Series, 38. Bielefeld: DFG: Research Center (SFB) 882.
Funke, Peter N. 2012: The Global Social Forum Rhizome: A Theoretical Framework. In Globalizations 9(3), 351-364.
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar 2002: Toward New Imaginaries: An Introduction. In Public Culture 14(1), 1-19.
Garcia-Albacete, Gema/Theocharis, Yannis 2014: Opportunities and Challenges of Analysing Twitter Content: A Comparison of the Occupation Movements in Spain, Greece and the United States. In Cantijoch et al. (eds.), Analysing social media data and web networks. New York, NY; Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 119-153.
Gumucio Dagron, A. 2011: Comunicación para el cambio social: clave del desarrollo participativo. In Pereira, J. M./Cadavid, A. (Eds.), Comunicación, desarrollo uy cambio social: interrelaciones entre comunicación, movimientos ciudadanos y medios. Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 19-36.
Hall, Budd L./Clover, Darlene E./Crowther, J. I. M./Scandrett, Eurig 2011: Social movement learning: a contemporary re-examination. In Studies in the Education of Adults 43(2), 113-116.
Hemer, Oscar/Tufte, Thomas 2012: ComDev in the mediatized world. In Nordicom review (Special issue).
Kavada, Anastasia 2014: Transnational Civil Society and Social Movements. In Wilkins et al. (eds.), The handbook of development communication and social change. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 351-369.
Keck, M./Sikkink, K. 1998: Activist Beyond Borders: advocacy networks in international politics. United States of America: Cornell University Press.
Langdon, Jonathan/Larweh, Kofi 2015: Moving with the movement: Collaboratively building a participatory action research study of social movement learning in Ada, Ghana. In Action Research 13(3), 281-297.
Lee, Hen Ping/Holladay, Sherry J. 2017: Promoting Corporate Philanthropic Efforts through Social Media. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business 25(49), 35-47.
Marí Sáez, V. 2012: Building knowledge from the margins: information, knowledge and social movements. In Transinformação 24, 61-64.
Marinucci, Mimi 2010: You Can’t Front on Facebook. In Wittkower (ed.), Facebook and philosophy: what’s on your mind? Chicago: Open Court, 65-74.
Martin-Barbero, Jesus 2011: From Latin America: Diversity, Globalization and Convergence. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 8(1), 39-64.
Morozov, Evgeny 2011: The net delusion: how not to liberate the world. London: Allen Lane.
Oeldorf-Hirsch, Anne/Sundar, S. Shyam 2015: Posting, commenting, and tagging: Effects of sharing news stories on Facebook. In Computers in Human Behavior 44, 240-249.
Onyx, Jenny/Armitage, Lisa/Dalton, Bronwen/Melville, Rose/Casey, John/Banks, Robin 2010: Advocacy with Gloves on: The ‘Manners’ of Strategy Used by Some Third Sector Organisations Undertaking Advocacy in NSW and Queensland. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary & Nonprofit Organisations 21(1), 41-61.
Reid, Elizabeth J. 2000: Understanding the word ‘advocacy’: Context and use. Edited by Reid. 2 vols. Vol. 1, Structuring the inquiry into advocacy. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.
Reitan, Ruth 2012: Theorizing and Engaging the Global Movement: From Anti-Globalization to Global Democratization. Globalizations 9(3), 323-335.
Saldaña, Johnny 2015: The coding manual for qualitative researchers. 3 ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Shirky, Clay 2008: Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organisations. New York: Penguin Books.
Silverman, David 2013: Doing qualitative research. Los Angeles: Sage.
SSNC 2011: Murky waters. The environmental and social impacts of shrimp farming in Bangladesh and Ecuador. Retrieved from: http://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/sites/default/files/dokument-media/murky_waters.pdf.
Steger, Manfred B./Goodman, James/Wilson, Erin K. 2013: Justice globalism: ideology, crises, policy. London, CA, New Delhi: Sage.
Steger, Manfred B./Wilson, Erin K. 2012: Anti-Globalization or Alter-Globalization? Mapping the Political Ideology of the Global Justice Movement 1. In International Studies Quarterly 56(3), 439-454.
Steger, Manfred B. 2009: The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror.: Oxford University Press.
Tarlau, R. 2014: From a Language to a Theory of Resistance: Critical Pedagogy, the Limits of ‘Framing’, and Social Change. In Educational Theory, 64(4), 369-392. doi:10.1111/edth.12067
Taylor, Charles 2004: Modern Social Imaginaries, Public Planet Book. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Toret, Javier 2013: Tecnopolítica: la potencia de las multitudes conectadas. In IN3 Working Paper Series. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya: In3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Tufte, Thomas 2015: Comunicación para el cambio social. Spain: Icaria editorial.
Tufte, Thomas 2013: Towards a Renaissance in Communication for Social Change. In Tufte et al. (Eds.), Speaking up and talking back?: media, empowerment and civic engagement among East and Southern African youth. Göteborg: Nordicom,
Wellborn, Paul F., III 2012: ‘Undercover teachers’ beware: how that fake profile on Facebook could land you in the pokey. In Mercer Law Review 63(2), 697.
Yepez-Reyes, Veronica 2017: La Estructura Rizomática de la Incidencia 2.0. In Revista de la PUCE(104).
Yepez-Reyes, Veronica/Dohn, Nina Bonderup 2016: Affordances for læring i web 2.0: En rodvækstanalyse af kommunikation i organiserede sociale bevægelser. In Dohn/Hansen (Eds.), Didaktik, design og digitalisering. Samfundslitteratur, 175-196.
Yin, Robert K. 2014: Case study research: design and methods. 5th ed. London: Sage Publications.
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Published
2018-12-22
How to Cite
Yepez-Reyes, V. (2018). Connective Action for Global Fairness: Building Social Imaginaries. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, (58), 215–230. https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v0i58.111686
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