Critical Perspectives

With researchers from four Nordic countries and Kenya, this research project examines the patterns of new media appropriations by ordinary citizens in rural and semi-urban areas in the Global South and the implications of these on different processes of social change in the region. In doing so, the project aims to specifically achieve the following three things:

• Provide an empirically-grounded and Nordic-led search for cross-disciplinary and cutting-edge responses to the theoretical and methodological challenges in understanding contemporary new media appropriations and their implications for social change in the Global South.
• Offer empirically-grounded reflections that can inform Nordic development policy especially with regards to issues like the opportunities; challenges and prospects of ordinary citizens’ appropriations of new media platforms in the Global South to exercise civic agency; (re)claim their rights and alter lines of political; social; gender and generational inequalities.
• Deepen collaboration among Nordic researchers interested in examining the role of media in processes of social; cultural and political change and provide empirical research from the Global South that speaks into existing Nordic-based research on these themes.

The project is financed by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS) and runs in the period 2013-2016. The full project title is: Critical Perspectives on New Media and Processes of Social Change in the Global South.

Participating universities are:

Denmark:
Roskilde University (Lead Partner)
Aarhus University

Norway:
Hedmark University College
Oslo  and Akershus University College

Kenya:
Moi University

Sweden:
Malmö University
Uppsala University

Contact:

Project Director
Thomas Tufte