Research

The growing attention to issues of good governance has come to be one of the most significant innovations in recent development thinking. However, noteworthy in this development has been a rather limited focus on the role which communication potentially can play in enhancing processes of good governance and accountability.

A process of convergence seems to be gradually underway, a convergence process where the emerging paradigm of communication for social change very obviously is dealing with issues of accountability, transparency and citizen’s rights in governance processes. At the same time, institutions engaged in work related to good governance are grappling with how to incorporate the media as well as communication more broadly speaking into good governance projects – beyond the traditional support of freedom of expression and free and independent media as has been seen for decades.

Some of these “next-generation-questions” regarding the relationship between communication, media development, good governance and a series of development challenges is what is contributing to set the research agenda for Ørecomm.

Given the common thematic platforms of academic expertise at MAH and RUC, Ørecomm will focus on developing a research programme which in the course of the first 3-year period will develop into 5 specific research strands. Ørecomm researchers are involved in all these strands:

• Citizenship, governance and public sphere
• Cultural and media production
• Diaspora, migration and transnational flows
• Health and environment
• Media and conflict