Este artículo examina las prácticas de circulación de la producción teórica en el campo de estudios de la comunicación y los medios en la actual fase de internacionalización, y revisa las relaciones problemáticas entre Sur y Norte. En base a la revisión crítica del proceso de edición de un número especial de una revista prestigiosa del campo disciplinar producida en inglés, reflexionamos acerca de los límites estructurales que influyen en la peculiar presencia y ausencia de producciones latinoamericanas e hilvanamos un conjunto de lecciones sobre los (des)encuentros entre el sistema de publicaciones científicas angloparlante y los estudios latinoamericanos, y los desafíos que estos implican para la internacionalización de los estudios de comunicación.

The Videoletters Project was a high-profile case of international media assistance to the Western Balkans launched in 2005 with British and Dutch support. Its explicit goal was to promote large-scale reconciliation among ordinary citizens of the former Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the region's breakup. The project was welcomed internationally: reported on by the press, spotlighted and prized in documentary film festivals, and referred to in scholarly work and policy forums. This was despite the fact that its promise that it would mediate reconciliation via the making and broadcasting of a documentary was barely fulfilled. Based on a qualitative study of the project’s uses of communication to do good and to look good, this chapter considers how an international intervention that harnessed media for do-gooding shifted towards communicating the goodness of aid to donors’ own constituencies. It moreover raises questions for the future research of donors’ dual deployment of communication to do good and to look good.

This paper considers how the discourses of global governance institutions about the power of digital technologies to save the world frame the operations of Western human rights organizations (Chakravartty, 2006; Kleine, 2013; Wildermuth & Ngomba, 2016). Starting from a qualitative text analysis of recent World Bank and OECD reports -"Digital Dividends" (WB, 2016) and "The Sustainable Development Goals as Business Opportunities" (OECD, 2016)- I demonstrate the fit between these institutional discourses, the business-driven digitalization of international intervention, and human rights work via a case study of the Natalia Project. Launched in 2013 by a Swedish non-governmental organization funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the project equips selected human rights activists at risk with a digitally-driven alarm system, and acts as convenor of an online network of the activists’ supporters via Facebook and Twitter under the motto “Your attention can save lives”. Based on the triangulation of project documentation and interviews to participating human rights as well as NGO staff, the paper interrogates the complex links between four inter-linked elements: a) the dangerous labour of local activists in countries where human rights are subject to violation, b) the donor-driven intervention at a distance of the Swedish NGO with the stated goal to protect these activists, c) the uncritical emphasis on the power of loose networks to gather protective response via social media, and d) the pilot-testing of surveillance gadgets by private business companies for market purposes in the context of a humanitarian intervention.

This conference presentation considers how the discourses of global governance institutions about the power of digital technologies to save the world frame the operations of Western human rights organizations (Chakravartty, 2006; Kleine, 2013; Wildermuth & Ngomba, 2016). Starting from a qualitative text analysis of recent World Bank and OECD reports -"Digital Dividends" (WB, 2016) and "The Sustainable Development Goals as Business Opportunities" (OECD, 2016)- I demonstrate the fit between these institutional discourses, the business-driven digitalization of international intervention, and human rights work via a case study of the Natalia Project. Launched in 2013 by a Swedish non-governmental organization funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the project equips selected human rights activists at risk with a digitally-driven alarm system, and acts as convenor of an online network of the activists’ supporters via Facebook and Twitter under the motto “Your attention can save lives”.

Based on the triangulation of project documentation and interviews to participating human rights as well as NGO staff, the paper interrogates the complex links between four inter-linked elements: a) the dangerous labour of local activists in countries where human rights are subject to violation, b) the donor-driven intervention at a distance of the Swedish NGO with the stated goal to protect these activists, c) the uncritical emphasis on the power of loose networks to gather protective response via social media, and d) the pilot-testing of surveillance gadgets by private business companies for market purposes in the context of a humanitarian intervention.

En marzo de 2020, la Organización Mundial de la Salud caracterizó al COVID-19 como pandemia y el gobierno argentino estableció una cuarentena obligatoria en todo el país. Durante la pandemia, la situación de las mujeres en Argentina, que ya era precaria, se degradó más aún: llevaron adelante la abrumadora mayoría de las tareas domésticas y de cuidado no remuneradas, se vieron especialmente afectadas por la pérdida de empleo, y la violencia de género aumentó aún más. La organización de movilizaciones en espacios públicos se tornó sumamente difícil y las expresiones públicas en redes sociales de mujeres dedicadas al periodismo, el activismo feminista y la política estuvieron sujetas a agresiones y abusos machistas. En este contexto, ¿qué prácticas comunicacionales movilizaron las mujeres en sus vidas diarias, marcadas por la pandemia y las restricciones resultantes? ¿Qué cambios implicaron dichas prácticas respecto de la vida cotidiana pre-pandemia? ¿Qué obstáculos enfrentaron las mujeres al desplegar dichas prácticas? ¿Y qué tienen que ver estas prácticas con la (in)justicia de género? A partir de una encuesta cualitativa en línea realizada en 2021, este trabajo presenta hallazgos acerca de las prácticas comunicacionales que las mujeres pusieron en acción en Argentina durante la vida cotidiana en pandemia. 

Las mujeres constituyen aproximadamente el 53 % de la población argentina. Si bien tanto la constitución nacional como legislación específica garantizan la protección de sus derechos, en la práctica la pobreza, la violencia y la discriminación las afectan de manera desproporcionada (Dirección Nacional de Economía, Igualdad y Género, 2020; INDEC, 2022). Durante la pandemia de COVID-19 declarada en marzo de 2020, su situación, que ya era precaria, se degradó más aún: llevaron adelante la abrumadora mayoría de las tareas domésticas y de cuidado no remuneradas, se vieron especialmente afectadas por la pérdida de empleo formal y trabajo informal, y la violencia de género aumentó y se agravó aún más (FUNDEPS, 2020; Maceira et al, 2020). El aislamiento obligatorio implementado por el gobierno argentino como medida preventiva obstaculizó la organización de las movilizaciones en espacios públicos típicas de las luchas feministas lideradas por el movimiento #NiUnaMenos desde el 2015. También hubo obstáculos en el ciberespacio. Las expresiones públicas en redes sociales de mujeres dedicadas al periodismo, el activismo feminista y la política estuvieron sujetas a agresiones y abusos machistas (Amnesty International, 2021; Cuellar & Chaer, 2020). El sistema de medios de comunicación argentino operó durante la pandemia en el marco de un desmantelamiento de los organismos y mecanismos estatales destinados a promover o salvaguardar la igualdad de género, y las trabajadoras del sector experimentaron formas específicas de inequidad, violencia laboral y precarización (Albornoz Saroff, 2021).

En este contexto, ¿de qué maneras se informaron las mujeres en Argentina durante el aislamiento obligatorio y en el período inmediatamente posterior, cuando las restricciones se fueron dejando paulatinamente sin efecto? A partir de una encuesta cualitativa en línea realizada en julio y agosto de 2021 (N=157), y de entrevistas semi-estructuradas realizadas en persona entre septiembre de 2021 y septiembre de 2022 (en CABA, provincia de Bs.As., Rosario, Resistencia y Trelew), en esta ponencia contribuyo a responder esa pregunta. La encuesta aporta datos sobre los usos de televisión, radio y redes sociales, y sobre las maneras de informarse preferidas por las mujeres. Las entrevistas aportan detalle cualitativo acerca de qué motiva a las mujeres a adoptar o descartar ciertas maneras de informarse, e ilustran qué estrategias ponen en práctica en sus vidas cotidianas para mantenerse al tanto de los problemas que las afectan. La descripción y el análisis preliminar de los hallazgos derivados de la encuesta y las entrevistas contribuyen a entender de qué maneras se posicionan las mujeres frente a un ecosistema de medios en transformación y un acceso desigual a los servicios de conectividad. 

How do ordinary citizens get informed today? Based on qualitative interviews conducted with women in Argentina in 2021-2022, I analyze which forms of information they have access to, which types of media they tend to adopt or reject and why, and what are their strategies to stay on top of those gendered issues that particularly affect them. The analysis shows how and why they find the daily task of informing themselves problematic in various ways. The analysis moreover illuminates how, to stay on top of issues that affect them, they resort to distinct practices: they relate to each other, choose collaborative media with a feminist focus, and follow female journalists recognized for their attention to gender issues. The work-in-progress article on which this presentation is based will contribute to rethinking how to study everyday information practices with a gender perspective, and to imagining how information diets aimed at advancing women’s rights may look like.

As documented by Griffin and Leibetseder (2019), although large research funders based in the North (e.g. the European Commission) increasingly require that scholars conduct transnational studies, the literature on what this means for seeking ethics approval in the case of qualitative approaches remains scant. Relatedly, in practice ethics approval remains a largely national phenomenon, driven by the logics of quantitative research, that fails to take into account the geopolitics of conducting research across North and South borders. This state of affairs raises significant questions for scholars who adopt a participatory research ethos. Which procedures should we used in order to identify and recruit research participants? How should we deal with the standard definitions of 'vulnerability' and 'incidental findings' typically adopted by ethics evaluation boards (and challenge them if so required)? Which approaches to social media data would bring us closer to conducting critical research with others rather than upon others? (Luka and Millette, 2018) How could we move from automatically offering anonymisation to participants as a precaution to discussing with them whether and why they may want or need to be anonymous or have their voices recognized? (Sinha and Back, 2016).

Drawing on lessons learnt from seeking ethics approval for a qualitative multi-method project funded by the European Commission to conduct research about everyday communicative activism in a country of the so-called global South, this paper: a) maps some of the challenges raised by ethics requirements derived from an error-avoidance, philo-quantitative model keen on a priori decisions; b) identifies biases against the South raised in ethical approval requirements that hinder transnational collaboration; and c) argues for a contextual and processual approach to ethics (Markham, 2018) that foregrounds dialogue between researcher and participants, and between researchers in the North and the South, in order to democratize methodologies.

References

Griffin, G. and Leibetseder, D. (2019) "'Only Applies to Research Conducted in Sweden...': Dilemmas in Gaining Ethics Approval in Transnational Qualitative Research" in International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Volume 18: 1–10. DOI: 10.1177/1609406919869444

Luka, M.E. & Millette, M. (2019) "(Re)framing Big Data: Activating Situated Knowledges and a Feminist Ethics of Care in Social Media Research" in Social Media + Society, January-March 2018: 1–10. DOI: 10.1177/20563051187682

Markham, A. (2018) "Ethics as Impact—Moving From Error-Avoidance and Concept Driven Models to a Future-Oriented Approach" in Social Media + Society, July-September, 1–11. DOI: 10.1177/2056305118784504 

Sinha, S. and Back, L. (2013) "Making methods sociable: dialogue, authorship and ethics in qualitative research" in Qualitative Research, 14(4): 473-87. DOI: 10.1177/1468794113490717

In this presentation I introduce findings from a research project that investigates the everyday communicative practices of Argentinian women for gender justice in the context of neoliberal capitalism, digital(ized) citizenship and the COVID-19 pandemic. Via a qualitative approach and a multi-method design, the project focuses on the micro(-techno?) politics of women’s everyday activism. Drawing on data from an online survey and semi-structured interviews conducted with women in Argentina in 2021-2022, I will show how they attempt to get the State's attention as they go about their everyday lives in the face of inequality, gender violence and other dysfunctional or broken elements of democracy that affect them disproportionally. 

Based on this data-driven empirical characterization and engaging existing definitions of a politics of listening (Bickford, 1996; Bassel, 2007; Han, 2022), I will then analyze the perceived efficacy or inefficacy of Argentinian women’s communicative strategies aimed at the State. In which ways, and to which extent, do these strategies lead to the democratic justice being claimed by getting government agencies at various levels (national, provincial, municipal) to listen? From the perspective of gender justice (Goetz, 2007), I define listening for the purpose of my analysis not merely as the discursive acknowledgment of women's claims (or other symbolic actions with a similar aim) typical of government officers at various scales of governance, but as the concrete steps actually taken by government agencies to redress specific forms of injustice (Rodríguez, 2019; Kay, 2020; McRobbie, 2020). 

In this presentation I will introduce findings from an ongoing research project that investigates the everyday communicative practices of Argentinian women for gender justice in the context of digital(ized) citizenship and the COVID-19 pandemic. Via a qualitative approach and a multi-method design, the project focuses on the micro-(techno?)politics of women’s everyday activism. Drawing on an online survey and semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021, I will discuss how women struggle to get the Argentinian State's attention as they go about their everyday lives and face gender violence and inequality among other dysfunctional or broken elements of democracy that affect them. The notion of a politics of listening (Bickford, 1996; Bassel, 2007) guides my analysis of the perceived efficacy (or lack thereof) of Argentinian women’s communicative strategies to produce the democratic justice they claim vis-à-vis the extent to which listening from government agencies at various levels (national, provincial, municipal) is achieved. From the perspective of gender justice, I understand listening not merely as the discursive acknowledgment of women's claims (or other symbolic actions with a similar aim), but also as the concrete steps taken by government agencies to redress injustice.

The research project that I am working on, and that I will introduce in this Guest Lecture, investigates the everyday communicative practices of women for gender justice in the context of socioeconomic precariousness, digitalized citizenship, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This context has been characteristic of Argentina for the past two years. The project, financed by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship for the period 2020-2023, focuses on the Argentinian case from a qualitative perspective.

Which are those everyday communicative practices? How do they play out in women’s everyday lives? How do they contribute to the democratic resolution of the claims that women raise? Which obstacles do women face, in this sense?

My stated purpose when I designed the project was to contribute to strengthening the micro-technopolitics of women’s civic participation aimed at solving gender inequality and other dysfunctional or broken elements of democracy. At this point it looks like what I will be able to contribute is clarification about what women’s everyday communicative activism is and what it could be depending on significant contextual factors, as well as gender-specific detail about women’s information and communication practices in day-today life. I will also be making an empirically grounded call for a politics of listening as a responsibility of governance structures, both state structures and private structures.

Los medios colaborativos pueden potencialmente contribuir a la resiliencia ciudadana. ¿Pero recurren hoy a ellos sus públicos objetivos? ¿Y qué nos dice ese recurrir acerca de qué significa informarse actualmente? A partir de entrevistas cualitativas realizadas con mujeres en Argentina en 2021-2022, indago a qué formas de informarse tienen acceso, qué medios adoptan o rechazan, y cómo se mantienen al tanto acerca de las cuestiones que las afectan en particular. El análisis demuestra que informarse cotidianamente les resulta problemático en diversos sentidos. Para estar al tanto de las cuestiones que las afectan en particular, recurren a prácticas diferentes: se relacionan entre sí, acuden a medios colaborativos que trabajan temáticas feministas, y siguen a periodistas mujeres reconocidas por su atención a esas cuestiones. El artículo aporta elementos para repensar la información con perspectiva de género y el rol de los medios colaborativos en dietas informativas que nutran la resiliencia ciudadana.

This book chapter (published in Spanish) looks into the trajectory of the relationship between Internet connectivity in Argentina since its advent 1994, and the ways in which women adopted it and adapted to its subsequent transformations in their struggles for gender justice. From modem connectivity, email correspondence and listservs to smartphones and hashtag activism, this relationship has brought opportunities, but also been marked by unequal connectivity and increasing challenges. Forty years after Argentina return to democracy, public policies are required in order to guarantee women’s right to an online communication available for all and free of violence.

What are we talking about when we refer to Latin American communication studies in Western academic circles? Do we mean knowledge produced in Latin America, by Latin Americans, for Latin America? Is it those canonical studies written by Latin American scholars, translated to English up to the 1990s and widely circulated in the US & Europe? Do we mean theory-built based on the investigation of Latin American specificities, regardless of where/how the knowledge is produced/put into use? Is there a distinct Latin American epistemology pertaining to the study of communication? Drawing on lessons learnt in the making of the Special Issue of Communication Theory (Volume 28 Issue 2) released in May 2018, we'll be discussing these issues.

Drawing on lessons learnt from a qualitative multi-method research project undertaken in the so-called Global South with funding granted in the Global North via a Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, I discuss the challenges raised by a funding model that equate excellences with ambition and that rewards scholars in the North at the expense of extractivist approaches to studying the South. In an exercise of public reflexivity (Dean, 2017), I analyze the impact of the model’s biases on project design and method choice, and I reflect on the importance of listening to the realities of project participants to understand and honor the research situation’s specificity (Markham, 2018). What does it actually mean to conduct qualitative research with care for the participants that one engages in order to produce knowledge (Brannelly and Barnes, 2022)? I expect that doing reflexivity about this process may contribute to illuminating the methodological and ethical tensions, contradictions and risks that face scholars tied to Western funding, and to resetting prestigious grants as opportunities to exercise academic freedom by actively choosing to do no harm at the stage of data collection.

In this presentation I share work in progress aimed at rethinking the communicative dimensions of everyday activism. My considerations are based on a qualitative, exploratory study of women’s everyday communication practices in Argentina. My conceptual starting point for this rethinking is work published by political scientists Jane Mansbridge and Katherine Flaster fifteen years ago. The notion of ‘everyday activism’ was formulated by Jane Mansbridge and Katherine Flaster starting from in-depth interviews with women in the US conducted in the early nineties, through which they discovered and studied the use of the phrase “male chauvinist”. Based on this discovery, Mansbridge and Flaster (2007, 627) proposed that "everyday activists may not interact with the world of formal politics, but they take actions in their own lives to redress injustices that a contemporary social movement has made salient". Their focus on women’s everyday talk as a tool for persuasive “micronegotiations with their bosses, husbands and friends” (ibid, 628) implied that there is a communicative dimension to this form of activism (see Mansbridge 2013 for a refined conceptualization that did away with the gender dimension). The notion of ‘everyday activism’ has also been used and conceptualized by other scholars in more recent academic literature published in English, with communicative actions as a distinct element (Abbetz, 2012; Vivienne, 2015). Based on a non-probability/convenience online qualitative survey (N=158) conducted with Argentinean women in 2021, in this presentation I focus on those practices and make two analytical moves. First, I investigate whether respondents consider themselves activists for women’s rights (and to which extent) or not, and why. Then, I examine how they communicate about the problems affecting women that matter to them in their daily lives (preferred avenues and ways of doing), what they communicate (core themes and types of content), what difference they think their everyday activism makes (reflexivity about presumed impact), and what they would want to change about how they communicate (improvement of strategy). The approach serves to clarify current forms of everyday communicative agency for gender justice among women, and to unpack how that agency speaks to what Kay (2020) has defined as communicative injustice.

What is everyday activism? What does it have to do with women? What does communication have to do with it? And why does it matter? In this article, I revisit the concept of everyday activism formulated in the United States by Jane Mansbridge and Katherine Flaster in 2005 and expand on its communicative dimensions based on findings from an online qualitative survey conducted with women in Argentina in 2021. I consider if, to what extent, and why, survey participants consider themselves activists for women’s rights. I moreover examine how they communicate in daily life about the problems that affect them, what difference they think/hope their communicative practices will make, and what they would want to change about communicative practices. The article clarifies how agency and its communicative dimensions are understood and practiced by women seeking gender justice under ordinary circumstances, analyzes their potential and limits considering structural obstacles, and puts forward a definition of everyday communicative activism.

The 2nd decade of the 21st century has ended marked by citizens' mobilizations worldwide. The continued rise and span of these mobilizations challenges both the governments that citizens protest and the scholars seeking to study them (Vanden et al 2017). Attention has been given to the role of the digital in the make-up and outcomes of protests, and to political activists' uses of networked digital media during condensed moments of collective action to explain the rise and trajectories of social movements. Studies have focused on the presumed revolutionary character of discrete mass protest actions (e.g. Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street, Gezi Park, the Umbrella movement) and kept track of key activists' communicative practices. The properties of distinct social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) have been foregrounded from a media-centric perspective keen on the tactical effects of technology's presumed power to drive socio-political organizing (Treré, 2019). More specifically, women's mobilizations have been a topic of considerable interest for gender/feminist scholarship, but the study of their communicative dimensions in recent years remains limited to analytically isolated elements rather than framed as an issue of democratic rights: misrepresentation in the news and other forms of misrecognition, online activism, and violence experienced in social media. A recent host of studies around the hashtag #MeToo has overrepresented the digital West (Fotopolou, 2018) while eluding the communicative complexity, diversity and adaptive dynamism mobilized by women and LGBTQ+ communities in the democratic laboratory constituted by the Global South to demand justice. 

To counter the epistemic narrow-mindedness derived from this imbalance, this panel presentation looks a case of collective mobilization emblematic of citizen-driven technopolitical efforts under way in the Global South to fix gender inequality and other broken elements of democracy (Reguillo, 2017): the #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess) movement that emerged in Argentina in 2015 to challenge the state to address a spiral of violence against women, and the wider mobilization that followed from it. Since 2015, Argentinian women, who constitute 51,1% of the country's population but are disproportionally affected by gender-based inequalities (poverty, discrimination and violence), have protested this state of affairs with persistence and increasing strength in alliance with LGBTQ+ communities.

Forms of protest have included recurrent country-wide collective mobilizations held on March 8 (International Women’s Day) and November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), activist art, street and digital mobilizations to raise specific claims (e.g. the legislation of the right to abortion or the public denunciation of rape) and year-on-year record high participation in the National Women’s Meeting, held annually since 1986 but never massive until 2015. Four themes that have received scant attention from Western feminist scholarship, fixated as it is on the so-called #MeToo movement, emerge from the study of #NiUnaMenos and its aftermath: 1) the struggle for collectivity (rather than individuality), 2) the emphasis on agency (rather than victimhood), 3) the intertwined immersion in street and digital action; and 4) the emphasis on local particularities without disregarding global solidarity. These themes inform epistemic diversity in the study of women’s struggles for equality worldwide.

Fotopoulou, A. (2014) “Digital and networked by default? Women’s organisations and the social imaginary of networked feminism”. New Media & Society. Vol. 18, Issue: 6, pages 989-1005.

Reguillo, R. (2017) Insurrectional landscapes: Youth, networks and revolt in the civilizational autumn. Barcelona: NED Ediciones [Published in Spanish]

Treré, E. (2019) Hybrid media activism: Ecologies, imaginaries, algorithms. Oxon: Routledge.

Vanden, H., Funke, P., Prevost, G. (2017) The New Global Politics: Global Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge.

Large research funders based in the North increasingly require that scholars conduct transnational studies, but what does this mean in practice? (Griffin & Leibetseder, 2019). Drawing on a qualitative multi-method research project undertaken in the Global North with funding from a Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, I document the challenges raised by funding models that equate excellence with ambition and rewards scholars in the North at the expense of extractivist approaches to studying the South; I analyze the impact of said biases on project design; and I reflect on lessons learnt from fieldwork and the research situation’s specificity (Markham, 2018). Doing reflexivity (Dean, 2017) about this process contributes to illuminating the methodological and ethical tensions, contradictions and risks that face scholars tied to Western funding, and to resetting prestigious grants as opportunities to exercise academic freedom by actively choosing to do no harm at the stage of data collection.

In this presentation I will introduce findings from an ongoing research project that investigates the everyday communicative practices of Argentinian women for gender justice in the context of neoliberal capitalism, digital(ized) citizenship and the COVID-19 pandemic. Via a qualitative approach and a multi-method design, the project focuses on the micro(-techno?) politics of women’s everyday activism. Drawing on data from an online survey and from semi-structured interviews conducted with women in Argentina in the second semester of 2021, I will show how they attempt to get the State's attention as they go about their everyday lives in the face of inequality, gender violence and other dysfunctional or broken elements of democracy that affect them disproportionally. Based on this data-driven empirical description and starting from the notion of a politics of listening (Bickford, 1996; Bassel, 2007), I will then analyze the perceived efficacy or inefficacy of Argentinian women’s communicative strategies aimed at the State. In which ways, and to which extent, do these strategies lead to the democratic justice being claimed by getting government agencies at various levels (national, provincial, municipal) to listen? From the perspective of gender justice, I define listening for the purpose of my analysis not merely as the discursive acknowledgment of women's claims (or other symbolic actions with a similar aim) typical of government officers, but as the concrete steps taken by government agencies to redress specific forms of injustice (Rodríguez, 2019; Kay, 2020; McRobbie, 2020).

Las mujeres argentinas constituyen casi el 51% de la población de la Argentina, pero se ven afectadas por la pobreza, la discriminación y la violencia de manera desproporcionada a pesar de que la protección de sus derechos está garantizada constitucionalmente. La historia de las movilizaciones de mujeres en el país es larga, rica y diversa. En 2015, esa historia dio un nuevo giro en reacción a un incremento alarmante de la violencia de género. Desde entonces, las mujeres han expresado sus reclamos con una persistencia y una fuerza crecientes en las calles y en redes sociales. Pero la pandemia de COVID-19 exacerbó la desigualdad de género preexistente y se constituyó en un obstáculo para la organización de movilizaciones colectivas en espacios públicos. Desde marzo de 2020, cuando comenzó una cuarentena obligatoria en todo el país, las mujeres han llevado adelante aproximadamente el 75% de todos las tareas domésticas y de cuidado no remuneradas; sus intervenciones públicas en redes sociales han estado signadas por agresiones y abusos machistas; y la violencia de género aumentó (Amnesty International, 2021; Bergallo et al, 2021; Gibbons et al, 2020). 

En ese contexto, el proyecto "Mujeres y micro-tecnopolíticas de la participación: prácticas comunicacionales cotidianas, ciudadanía digital y democracia en Argentina" (financiado con una beca Marie Sklodowska-Curie de la Unión Europea) investiga las siguientes preguntas: ¿qué prácticas comunicacionales cotidianas movilizan las mujeres argentinas en pos de justicia de género en tiempos de ciudadanía digital? ¿En qué consisten esas prácticas? ¿Cómo se despliegan en la vida diaria? ¿Qué obstáculos enfrentan? ¿De qué maneras contribuyen a la resolución democrática de los reclamos que expresan? 

 A partir de una encuesta cualitativa en línea analizo las prácticas comunicacionales que las mujeres argentinas han puesto en acción en pos de justicia de género durante la 'covidianidad' -la vida cotidiana en pandemia, según la investigadora mexicana Rossana Reguillo (2021). La encuesta (consistente en dos rondas, una completada en junio de 2021 y otra a desarrollarse en agosto a posteriori del envío de este resumen) fue diseñada para toda persona que se identifique como mujer, sea mayor de 18 años y resida en Argentina. La recolección de datos se realizó utilizando la herramienta digital Sogo Survey. 

La primera ronda de la encuesta fue respondida por 56 personas con edades de 22 a 75 años y residencia en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y en seis (6) de las veintitrés (23) provincias argentinas. En tanto esta ronda se consideró un 'lanzamiento blando', destinado a probar la encuesta más allá del testeo piloto, su difusión fue limitada. El análisis de las respuestas revela detalles respecto de cómo se conciben el activismo y/o la militancia por los derechos de las mujeres, la escasez de tiempo libre y de descanso común a muchas a pesar de sus diferentes situaciones de vida, el amplio conocimiento acerca de los problemas que afectan a los mujeres y las diversas maneras de pensar y poner en acción estrategias comunicacionales para encararlos en el día a día.

Amnesty International (2021) Amnesty International Report 20/21: The state of the world's human rights. London: Amnesty International.

Bergallo, P., Mangini, M., Magnelli, M. y Bercovich. S. (2021) "Los impactos del COVID-19 en laautonomía económica de las mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe". PNUD LAC C19 PDS No. 25

Gibbons, A., Murphy, T. and Rossi, M. (2021) "Confinement and Intimate Partner Violence: The Short-Term Effect of COVID-19". Inter-American Development Bank.Mansbridge, J. and Flaster, K. (2007) The Cultural Politics of Everyday Discourse:The Case of “Male Chauvinism". Critical Sociology 33, 627–660Reguillo, R. (2021) “Escenarios, algoritmos y ecosistemas complejos: investigar la comunicación en la covidianidad”. Disponible en https://www.facebook.com/amicmx/videos/conferencia-magistral-dra-rossana-reguillo-escenarios-algoritmos-y-ecosistemas-c/677674649780468/ 

Temática a desarrollar

Las mujeres argentinas constituyen casi el 51% de la población del país, pero se ven afectadas por la pobreza, la discriminación y la violencia de manera desproporcionada a pesar de que la protección de sus derechos está garantizada tanto constitucionalmente como mediante legislación específica. La historia de las movilizaciones de mujeres en Argentina es larga, rica y diversa. En 2015, esa historia dio un nuevo giro en reacción a un incremento alarmante de la violencia de género. Desde entonces, las mujeres han expresado sus reclamos con una persistencia y una fuerza crecientes tanto en las calles como vía redes sociales. Pero la pandemia de COVID-19 exacerbó la desigualdad de género preexistente y se constituyó en un obstáculo para la organización de movilizaciones colectivas en espacios públicos. Desde marzo de 2020, cuando el gobierno argentino implementó una cuarentena obligatoria en todo el país, las mujeres han llevado adelante aproximadamente el 75% de todos las tareas domésticas y de cuidado no remuneradas; sus intervenciones públicas en redes sociales han estado signadas por agresiones y abusos machistas; y la violencia de género aumentó. 

En ese contexto, el proyecto "Mujeres y micro-tecnopolíticas de la participación: prácticas comunicacionales cotidianas, ciudadanía digital y democracia en Argentina" (financiado por el programa de investigación e innovación Horizon 2020 de la Unión Europea bajo el acuerdo de beca Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 897318) investiga las siguientes preguntas: ¿qué prácticas comunicacionales cotidianas movilizan las mujeres argentinas en pos de justicia de género en tiempos de ciudadanía digital y pandemia? ¿En qué consisten esas prácticas? ¿Cómo se despliegan en una vida diaria marcada por la pandemia y las restricciones resultantes? ¿Qué obstáculos enfrentan? ¿De qué maneras contribuyen a la resolución democrática de los reclamos que expresan? 

Objetivos del escrito 

A partir de una encuesta cualitativa en línea, este trabajo analiza las prácticas comunicacionales que las mujeres argentinas han puesto en acción en su 'covidianidad' -la vida cotidiana en pandemia tal como la ha definido la investigadora mexicana Rossana Reguillo- y el rol de las tecnologías digitales en tanto facilitador y obstáculo para sus esfuerzos en pos de justicia de género. La encuesta (consistente en dos rondas, una completada en junio de 2021 y otra a desarrollarse en agosto a posteriori del envío de este resumen) fue diseñada para toda persona que se identifique como mujer, sea mayor de 18 años y resida en Argentina. La recolección de datos se realizó utilizando la herramienta digital Sogo Survey. La primera ronda de la encuesta fue respondida por 56 personas con edades de los 22 a los 75 años y residentes en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y seis (6) de las veintitrés (23) provincias argentinas. En tanto la primera ronda se consideró un 'lanzamiento blando', destinado a probar la encuesta más allá del testeo piloto, su difusión fue limitada.  

Adelanto de las conclusiones

El trabajo propuesta para ENACOM2021 se centra en dos de las preguntas incluidas en la encuesta:  

1. ¿Cómo cambiaron tus maneras cotidianas de comunicarte durante la pandemia de COVID-19? y 
2. ¿Cómo afectó la pandemia de COVID-19 a los problemas de las mujeres que te llevan a movilizarte?

Las respuestas indican que las mujeres han incorporado las tecnologías digitales en gran medida para la comunicación a distancia: "la tecnología y las redes se convirtieron en esencial" (Rta. 51). Si bien se identifican ciertos aspectos positivos de este hecho, en general se lo considera problemático. Entre los aspectos positivos se destaca que el pasaje de lo presencial a lo digital "obligó a tomar más contacto con las posibilidades de la red"  e hizo posible "la comunicación simultánea con otras regiones y países" (Rta. 30). Tal como el trabajo demostrará en detalle, los aspectos considerados problemáticos son varios. Las expresiones clave con las que se los describe incluyen por ejemplo "perdimos", "dificulta", "limitado", "agotador" y "no hay". 

La mayoría de las respuestas referidas al impacto de la pandemia sobre los problemas que afectan a las mujeres señalan la doble dificultad impuesta por la compresión del espacio -hogares que se desdoblan y multiplican como lugares de trabajo y escuelas o guarderías- y la escasez de tiempo para lidiar con la superposición de tareas de cuidado, quehaceres domésticos, responsabilidades laborales y compromiso cívico. En este contexto, las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación son usadas y vividas como un nodo ambivalente. Por un lado, este nodo permite sostener el contacto con la familia extendida y lxs amigxs a quienes el distanciamiento social preventivo impide ver en persona, y en ese sentido es bienvenido. Por el otro, evidencia de manera constante los cambios en prácticas preexistentes impuestos por la pandemia, y en consecuencia se lo experimenta como límite (de lo posible) y como pérdida (de la riqueza y potencia que se le asigna a los encuentros presenciales).

Las mujeres constituyen casi el 53% de la población de la Argentina. Si bien la constitución nacional y leyes específica garantizan la protección de sus derechos, en la práctica la pobreza, la discriminación y la violencia las afectan de manera singular y desproporcionada. Durante la pandemia de COVID-19, la situación de las mujeres, que ya era precaria, empeoró, sin que existiera la posibilidad de organizar movilizaciones que expongan la situación y las demandas en el espacio público, algo que en los años anteriores tuvo una potencia colectiva inédita. ¿Cómo cambiaron las maneras cotidianas de comunicarse de estas mujeres durante la pandemia? ¿Y cómo influyó la pandemia respecto de las problemáticas que las afectan y las movilizan? A partir de una encuesta cualitativa en línea realizada entre junio y agosto de 2021, el artículo explora las prácticas comunicacionales de las mujeres en Argentina durante la cotidianidad pandémica y analiza el rol de las tecnologías digitales como herramientas ambivalentes en relación con sus esfuerzos por promover la justicia de género.

Normative approaches to conducting participatory research, and empirical accounts of participatory research experiences, abound (see e.g. Cornwall, 2011; Burns, Howard & Ospina, 2021). Variously defined, they have been a staple of communication and media studies concerned with the dynamics of social change for decades (see e.g. Dervin & Huesca, 1997; Bordenave, 2006; Thomas & van de Fliert, 2014; Jiménez-Martínez, Tufte & Suzina, 2020). In this presentation I reconsider taken-for-granted ideas about ‘participatory communication research’ by reflecting on the differences between designing a research project that depends on the participation of human subjects and putting the design to the test of fieldwork and interaction with those human subjects. Based on qualitative data from, and on a process of doing reflexivity about, an ongoing research project that focuses on the everyday practices of communicative practices of women in Argentina (CORDIS, 2020), I deconstruct the notion of participation implicit in my research design and show how and why I reconstructed it based on lessons learnt by engaging indialogue with the women who volunteered to act as my interviewees. Importantly, I show that preventive ethical clearance granted prior to fieldwork by university research boards and/or national ethical review agencies does not suffice to ensure that willing participants will be fairly taken into account as such. Participation, I argue, depends on a combination of factors, including (but not limited to): a systematic disposition to listen to research participants and take notice of the everyday challenges they face (Bassel, 2017), a commitment to dedicating time and space to reflexivity while in the process of collecting fieldwork data and rapidly assessing initial findings (Dean, 2017), and the flexibility to revise one’s own ideas as a researcher of what participation might mean in a specific context (Phillips, Christensen-Strynø & Frølunde, 2021). All things considered, “well-meant” may equate “top-down” approaches if we think of ‘granting participation’. Acknowledging that participation starts the moment that the subjects of our investigation agree to volunteering their time to meet with us may help us reconsider what researching with care means in practice. Researching with care (Brannelly & Barnes, 2022) is crucial at a time of increasing precariousness (Lorey, 2015).

Normative approaches to conducting participatory research abound (see e.g., Cornwall, 2011; Burns, Howard & Ospina, 2021), as is the case for empirical accounts of participatory communication research experiences (see e.g. Dyll-Myklebust & Zwane, 2015 and Thomas, Eggins, & Papoutsaki, 2016). Variously defined, participatory research has been a staple of communication and media studies with a focus on social change for decades (see e.g. Dervin & Huesca, 1997; Bordenave, 2006; Thomas & van de Fliert, 2014; Jiménez-Martínez, Tufte & Suzina, 2020).

In this presentation I will reconsider taken-for-granted ideas about what ‘participatory communication research’ is/should be by reflecting on the differences between designing a research project that depends on the participation of human subjects, getting formal ethical clearance, and putting the design to the test of conducting fieldwork in critical conditions in interaction with those human subjects.

Based on qualitative data from (and on the process of doing reflexivity about, see Dean, 2017), a research project that studies the everyday communicative practices of women in Argentina (CORDIS, 2020), I will deconstruct the notion of participation implicit in my initial research design and show how I reconstructed it to acknowledge lessons learnt from dialogue with the thirty-six (36) women I interviewed in 2021-2022, in the long aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the context of a dire socioeconomic situation. As I will show, acknowledging that participation starts the moment that the subjects of our investigation agree to volunteering their time to meet with us may help us reconsider what “researching with care” (Phillips, Christensen-Strynø & Frølunde, 2021; Brannelly & Barnes, 2022) means in practice. Such disposition is crucial at a time when qualitative research requiring the willing participation of human beings takes place in the context of increasing precariousness (Lorey, 2015). 

Since their origins in the late 1950s, Latin American communication studies have become increasingly institutionalized and thematically diverse. This evolution, however, has circulated to a limited extent beyond borders, as noted by North American scholars in the 1990s. Attentive to this problem, this article reviews how Latin America has featured in Communication Theory’s archive since 1992 and introduces a Special Issue that incorporates recent contributions from the region into the journal’s corpus. The analysis shows the extremely limited presence of Latin America in Communication Theory both in terms of substantial contributions to theory-building arising from the region, and of Latin American authorship. We argue that this state of affairs evidences the need for explicit editorial policies aimed at addressing the gap, and for increased cross-border interaction among scholars. The Special Issue hereby introduced contributes to resituating Latin America in international communication theory by foregrounding situated approaches generated in the region.

The Special Issue hereby introduced contributes to resituating Latin America in international communication theory by foregrounding situated approaches generated in the region.

Communication for and about development are significant components of international development cooperation, interlinked in practice though separated in research. This article examines their interaction in donor-driven aid through the lens of journalism. How is bilateral development cooperation communicated about in the news? How does a donor agency communicate for and about development? And what are the links between one and the other? In 2016, a prime-time exposé aired by the Swedish public TV reported on alleged corruption in aid to Zambia, depicting events as the double failure of donor and recipient. Our analysis clarifies how (a) how the news media in a top donor country covers public development aid for its citizen audiences; and (b) how a bilateral donor agency understands and practices communication as it interacts with the news media on the one hand, and with partners and beneficiaries on the ground on the other. We focus on the news media as mediator of the donor’s communication with its tax-paying citizen audiences, demonstrating the potential of an integrated conceptual approach to communication for and about development, and raising questions for future research. 

International development stakeholders harness communication with two broad purposes: to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicate do-gooding, via public relations and information. This book unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are combined with attempts to look good, be it in the eyes of donor constituencies at large, or among more specific audiences, such as journalists or intra-agency decision-makers.

Development communication studies have tended to focus primarily on interventions aimed at doing good among recipients, at the expense of examining the extent to which promotion and reputation management are elements of those practices. This book establishes the importance of interrogating the tensions generated by overlapping uses of communication to do good and to look good within international development cooperation.

The book is a critical text for students and scholars in the areas of development communication and international development and will also appeal to practitioners working in international aid who are directly affected by the challenges of communicating for and about development.

In international development cooperation, various stakeholders make use of communicationin order to promote a globally agreed agenda: multilateral, regional, andbilateral organisations; international and national civil society organisations; and theprivate sector, among others. These uses generally have one of two broad purposes:to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicatethe good done, via information and public relations. Instances in which bothpurposes are combined have remained under-researched.Little is known abouthow they overlap in practice, and therefore about how to address the tensions andcontradictions that may ensue from this overlap. The question of whether a primeconcern with making aid look good may override efforts to do good has not beensufficiently investigated until now.This edited collection starts from this question.