Abstract
This chapter critically reflects upon the meaning and ethics of maintaining reciprocal communication between researchers and activists in the context of studying activist media production practices. It engages with the tensions of maintaining distance and proximity to activist research, as well as of communicating and reflecting upon critique by exploring questions such as the possibilities of scholars to research activist practice without becoming activists themselves; the negotiation of power between scholars and activists, the forms that reciprocity can take and its limits. Not least, it prompts reflection on whether scholars should always be expected to reciprocate more than their activist informants. Contributing with a ‘thick ethical description’ (Sayer in Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), the essay builds upon fieldwork with a community of producers of the free 3D graphics animation software Blender in Amsterdam and urges us to think about the tensions of reciprocating and articulating critique of activist practices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I learned about these experiences in an informal follow-up which I did with some of the Blender participants in 2018, two years after the official end of my research.
References
Barbrook, R. (2005). The high-tech gift economy. First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v0i0.1517.
Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Björgvinsson, E. (2014). The making of cultural commons. In P. Ehn, E. M. Nilsson, & R. Topgaard (Eds.), Making futures: Marginal notes on innovation, design, and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Blender Institute. (2014a). Gooseberry campaign launched—We need 10k people to help! Available at: https://gooseberry.blender.org/gooseberry-campaign-launched-we-need-10k-people-to-help/. Accessed 4 September 2019.
Blender Institute. (2014b). New people: Matias and Julia. Available at: https://gooseberry.blender.org/new-people-matias-and-julia/. Accessed 4 September 2019.
Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, È. (2007). The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Coleman, G. (2013). Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Czarniawska, B. (2007). Shadowing : And other techniques for doing fieldwork in modern societies. Malmö, Sweden: Liber [u.a.].
Datta, R. (2018). Decolonizing both researcher and research and its effectiveness in Indigenous research. Research Ethics, 14(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016117733296.
Deacon, D., Pickering, M., Golding, P., & Murdock, G. (1999). Researching communications: A practical guide to methods in media and cultural analysis. London: Bloomsbury.
Fisher, C. B., & Anushko, A. E. (2008). Research ethics in social science. In P. Alasuutari, L. Bickman, & J. Brannen (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of social research methods (pp. 95–110). London, UK: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446212165.n8.
Fuster Morell, M. (2010). Governance of online creation communities: Provision of infrastructure for the building of digital commons (Doctoral Dissertation). European University Institute.
Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice (3rd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.
Jeppesen, S., Kruzynski, A., & Lakoff, A. (2014). Grassroots autonomous media practices: A diversity of tactics. Journal of Media Practice, 15(1), 21–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2014.892697.
Kelty, C. M. (2008). Two bits: The cultural significance of free software. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kostakis, V., & Drechsler, W. (2015). Commons-based peer production and artistic expression: Two cases from Greece. New Media & Society, 17(5), 740–754. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813511929.
Lehtiniemi, T., & Ruckenstein, M. (2019). The social imaginaries of data activism. Big Data & Society, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718821146.
Markham, A., & Buchanan, E. (n.d.). Ethical decision-making and internet research recommendations from the AoIR ethics working committee (Version 2.0). Available at: http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf.
O’Neil, M. (2014). Hacking Weber: Legitimacy, critique, and trust in peer production. Information, Communication & Society, 17(7), 872–888. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.850525.
Ross, A. (2004). No-collar: The humane workplace and its hidden costs. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Routledge, P., & Derickson, K. D. (2015). Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(3), 391–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775815594308.
Sayer, A. (2011). Why things matter to people: Social science, values and ethical life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511734779.
Traianou, A. (2014). The centrality of ethics in qualitative research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199811755.013.028.
Velkova, J. (2014). One week at the Blender Institute. Available at: http://phd.nordkonst.org/?p=84. Accessed 3 November 2014.
Velkova, J. (2016a). Free software beyond radical politics: Negotiations of creative and craft autonomy in digital visual media production. Media and Communication, 4(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877915598705.
Velkova, J. (2016b). Open cultural production and the online gift economy: The case of Blender. First Monday 21(10). Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6944.
Velkova, J., & Jakobsson, P. (2017). At the intersection of commons and market: Negotiations of value in open-sourced cultural production. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(1), 14–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877915598705.
Yang, G. (2016). Cyberactivism. In B. Peters (Ed.), Keywords: A vocabulary of information society and culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Available at: http://culturedigitally.org/2014/10/hackers-draft-digitalkeywords/. Accessed 7 October 2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Velkova, J. (2020). The Ethics of Reciprocal Communication. In: Jeppesen, S., Sartoretto, P. (eds) Media Activist Research Ethics. Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44389-4_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44389-4_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44388-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44389-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)