Abstract
This chapter explores the role of information in social change, based on the perspectives of Brazilian popular communicators. The concept of dissonance emerges as the starting point of this process, defined under two complimentary categories, critical dissonance and solidarity dissonance. Prompted by a context of digital disruption, alternative sources of information improve the conditions of expression. I define these dynamics as critical dissonance and highlight their relevance in relation to the plurality of the public debate. Complementarily, fighting the patterns of a communicative capitalism, popular media put informational content in the service of communicative action. They make place for an ecology of knowledges. The concept of solidarity dissonance highlights, then, the coexistence between different forms of being and perspectives and the improvement of cognitive processes.
All translations into English were made by the author
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Notes
- 1.
This observation is made upon 55 interviews with communicators leading media initiatives within 17 social movements, NGOs, and community associations in six Brazilian regions, from 2013 to 2017, within a doctoral research that I defended in 2018 at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
- 2.
Jodi Dean explains that “The notion of communicative capitalism conceptualises the commonplace idea that the market, today, is the site of democratic aspirations, indeed, the mechanism by which the will of the demos manifests itself” (Dean 2005, pp.54–55). It is animated by three main fantasies, that are the abundance, the activity/participation, and the wholeness.
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Suzina, A.C. (2020). Dissonance. In: Tacchi, J., Tufte, T. (eds) Communicating for Change. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_13
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