Session 3b: Influences of Media and Journalism
5th Global Conference
Friday 9th March – Sunday 11th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
Who is Crafting the Nation? Media as Nation Building- Self-Representation as Politics: The Different Roles and Audiences within Transnational People’s Journalism
Shayna Plaut
Education Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada
This paper examines the different methods used by transnational peoples to intervene within the public sphere as journalists, cultural producers and activists. My questions and analysis are grounded by the idea that by shaping what is news, different opportunities for action and change can become possible. Charli Carpenter (2007) has termed this process “issue emergence.” I begin with the belief that although there is an often under-appreciated relationship between media, civil society and activism, it is a relationship fitted within and by different agendas, norms and languages, a point written about extensively by Bob (2005) as well as media and social movement scholars De Jong, Stammers and Shaw (2005) who correctly highlight the gap in both the academic literature and within more grounded activist strategies (p.3). Critical theorists such as Nancy Fraser have also discussed the relationship between media, self-representation and agency by reimaging the public sphere as many spheres of counter publics and subaltern publics.
My work examines how different transnational peoples envision media making as a political project. I will illustrate this process by comparing two very different forms of media/journalism education: the formal, tertiary journalism education program of Saami University College and the development based media trainings offered to (but rarely by) Romani journalists from donor sponsered organizations. Recognizing the diversity within and between transnational peoples, I argue that their use of media journalism training has many similarities namely the use of claim to agency, self-representation and political claim making. How does this change the way transnational peoples are taught to be journalists? Is the stated goal to be “fair and balanced” when speaking to the outside world or is it to both create your community and then serve their needs? How do you remain credible if there is no pretense of neutrality?
Preliminary research suggests that the pedagogical approaches used in journalism education/media trainings by transnational peoples, and organizations working with transnational peoples, offers a more transparent approach to the relationship between media and social change. I argue that transnational peoples can often be conceived of, and often strategically conceive of themselves as, subaltern counter publics, and will evoke a kind of “strategic essentialism” in order to present targeted political goals (Spivak 1987). And yet they are often recipients of “aid” which comes packaged in the goals of “development.” Too often ” development” – so often thought of in economic terms and or in liberal democracy building terms, is seen as being in a dependent position – rather I posit the question – can “development” actually be a form of nation building? In other words can development be an = means of exercising self-determination? And if so, what role can self-representation through media, and producing media makers, play in this project?
My research focuses on the different methods of crafting and teaching journalism and media strategy with the common purpose of creating change. My work focuses not only on how such peoples are presenting their problems but also how they are shaping claims to redress and proposing alternatives and in turn crafting their identities to multiple audiences.
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Media and the Construction of Cultures and Identities
Oluwatoyin Sogbesan
Center for Cultural and Policy Management, City University London, Northampton Square, London, UK
This paper investigates and discuss the impact of media in particular that of Video Graphic Media [VGM] on peoples’ identities through construction of their cultures. Video Graphic Media [VGM], a very powerful media tool which when finds its way into the cultural domain could bring about changes in their identities and cultures. Culture in the broadest sense is a form of highly participatory activity in which people create their societies and identities. It further characterises and shapes individuals, drawing out and refining their potentialities and capabilities. Despite culture being somewhat stable and passed from generation to generation, identity is always undergoing constant transformations. Therefore becoming increasingly disjointed, fractured, and multiply constructed across different positions. This paper will try to examine and possibly answer those questions as 1.) What changes can be brought about to cultures and identities by exposure to VGM? 2) Could VGM associates or disassociates one’ culture(s) from one’s identity and vice versa? 3.) What are the effects of VGM on the society?
The application of VGA within the spheres of cultures and identities has been influenced by ever increasing information societies and globalization. Encouraging both governments and a non-governmental body to air their views through television/ WebTV and You-tube (for example, London riot) emphasizing the notion of ‘seeing is believing’. Thus convincing both local and foreign viewers that what they view is reality of everyday life. Utilising a theoretical methodological approach, the paper argues that VGM unlike other media tools/elements, is combined audio-visual when exploited in a careful and well laid format could be used to re-construct cultures and identities. However one will stress that these re-constructions are unavoidable of bias because they construct some features of physical reality at the expense of others that may result in the adoption or rejection of new identities and cultures.
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