Minna Aslama Horowitz
Welcome to look at the media and communication technologies through the lens of reform, advocacy, and activism.
This first week is a hefty descriptive introduction, painting the big picture (or pictures) with a broad brush. We will discuss the idea of media reform (what and why), as well as some global benchmarks and the re-birth of the movement(s) in the 1990s (the how of the recent past). This is to lay out a foundation of more detailed, nuanced scholarly discussions to follow. However, please also note that a part of the course focuses on very concrete strategies and tactics, as well as related hands-on work. This introduction will hopefully serve both the theory and praxis dimensions of the course. You will have plenty to read/watch, but the assignment for next week is an easy one, to balance your workload.
Basic Definition: Media in Need of Reform
Social reforms can happen and be supported through the media. In other words, people and civic organizations that strive for social change may use the media as a vehicle to further and support their cause. But sometimes the media themselves need attention. Individuals and organization may work on misgivings and defects of media systems, content, reception and access.
In this course, we concentrate on the latter issues and stakeholders: problems and related movements regarding the media themselves, and scholarship supporting that work. While Media Reform is not an unified movement, its topics are clearly linked to a better — more democratic, inclusive, open, just, egalitarian, transparent — world. It is essentially about redistribution of (symbolic and economic) power that is directly or indirectly related to mediated communication.
Here is a 5-minute refresher crash course by the journalism visionary Dan Gillmor: He highlights the power of communication (technologies) throughout the human history — and the battle over control:
And here are some important issues, in your own words (from the questionnaire):
Communication and Democracy in the Global Context
Most media reform stakeholders and activities in the past decades have focused on national contexts — mass media, after all, were structured around national systems. But the philosophical grounds are shared in many countries. Ever since the Greco-Roman tradition of public communication as a tool for problem-solving and decision making (think Aristotle & Socrates) the ideas and ideals of communication and democracy have been closely linked. The rise of mass media in the 19th century took that idea to another level when information could be shared, at least potentially, not only by the elites, but by vast groups of people, regardless of economic or social standing. No wonder the printing press was influential in educating and activating the proletariat.