Citizen engagement – C4D Network

Citizen Engagement in Peacebuilding: a communication for development approach to rebuilding peace from the bottom-up

September 12, 2019

Author: Dr Valentina Baú

By unearthing the connections between the literatures on participatory communication and civic engagement with the reality of postconflict peace, this article demonstrates how a communication for development (C4D) approach to engaging citizens in peacebuilding contributes to strengthening the reconstruction process at the end of the violence, while engendering a bottom up process based on dialogue and inclusivity. After offering a brief overview of the peacebuilding contexts, this article presents a theoretical discussion that brings to the surface not only the role of C4D in facilitating citizens participation in government decision making, but also its significance in creating an inclusive peacebuilding process that starts from the community. At the same time, this discussion begins to shed light on the relationship between communication for development and participatory governance.

You can access the article here: Baú, V. (2016) Citizen Engagement in Peacebuilding. A communication for development approach to rebuilding peace from the bottom up, Progress in Development Studies, Vol.16, No.4, pp.348-360

Understanding Transition VII Conference: Voices of the voiceless – New challenges of mobilization and citizen engagement (Bucharest, Romania)

September 11, 2019

The “Voices of the voiceless: New challenges of mobilization and citizen engagement” international conference is the 7^th edition of the Understanding Transition conferences held byFJSC (University of Bucharest) and the Lumière University Lyon 2.

Participating, sharing, mobilizing and interactivity have become essential strategies to shaping citizen engagement and a collaborative construction of knowledge. Digital platforms allow citizens to turn into the new power-holders through online empowerment, thus becoming active prosumers of knowledge production. Sharing knowledge is important in digital citizenship and the various forms of transmitting knowledge depend on the affordances of online channels. Organizations have been trying to reduce the communication and/or democratic deficit by using e-platforms as communicative spaces where a dialogue-based public engagement prevail by involving citizens in the process of decision-making of social, cultural, economic, or political issues (Phillips, Carvalho, Doyle, 2012).

Besides this co-production of meaning where a collaborative perspective is dominant, people use organizational and civil society online outlets as sites of cyber-activism. The “netizens” (Franklin, 2010) have become important members of a civic engagement community by having a collective identity, a common bond, and the same grievances concerning a political, social, educational or cultural issue.

This international conference is an ideal opportunity for experienced researchers, young researchers and PhD students to share their scientific work in an interdisciplinary context and to take part in the debates over various approaches and case studies related to dialogic turn, participatory democracy, and the latest forms of citizen engagement and mobilization.

Click here for further information.

Citizen-generated data and sustainable development (Development Initiatives Research Report 2017)

May 5, 2017

The development data and information landscape in Kenya and Uganda has changed significantly over recent years. Officials, civil society and the private sector are stepping up efforts to harness existing and new data sources to support decision-making and accountability for sustainable development. Some proponents of citizen-generated data see it as a key element in the emerging data revolution, ensuring citizen engagement, government responsiveness and impact at the local level, while helping fill important gaps in official data.

There is, however, a need for stronger evidence on how citizen-generated data initiatives contribute to change in the development context. This report, based on two case studies from Kenya and Uganda aims to help build that evidence.