India

The proposed multi-disciplinary project aims to making South Indian artisanal fishers' livelihoods more secure and sustainable by improving safety at sea. Bringing together these small-scale fishers with weather forecasters and government agencies, it will devise, test and promote effective means for the co-production and communication of accurate weather forecasts, thus increasing resilience of the fishers amidst a trend of extreme and hazardous weather conditions in a changing climate. Moreover, the project will devise an "action template" of practical methods and a road-map for co-producing and communicating accessible and effective weather forecasts to artisanal fishers elsewhere in India and beyond. It will also contribute to academic debates concerning: the understanding and response to environmental risks; the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in disseminating information and warnings to diverse and vulnerable populations; and the knowledge, practices and livelihoods of fishing communities in Asia. The main objective of the proposed project is to close the gap between what marine weather forecasters produce and disseminate, and what artisanal fishers recognize as relevant and actionable inputs for decision-making. Access to trusted and actionable forecasts helps fishers make informed decisions to go to sea or not under hazardous weather conditions, thus reducing risk of potentially life-threatening accidents at sea, diminishing the loss of gear and boats, and, more generally, building resilience against hazardous weather conditions. Such weather-resilient pathways will contribute to promoting more secure and sustainable livelihoods for artisanal fishers in India and elsewhere in the Global South. This project will be part of a larger effort called the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) to provide science relevant for implementing the SDGs in seventeen low and medium income countries. Drawing on the expertise of a multi-disciplinary research team--comprising anthropologists, geographers, atmospheric and marine scientists, and ICT and media experts - the proposed project combines complementary methodological approaches. It utilizes ethnographic methods to study the wider social, economic and cultural practices underpinning artisanal fishing, as well as to gauge fishers' forecast usage and uptake. It uses satellite and in-situ weather observations to gain insights into changing hazard patterns and forecast challenges, as well as to acquire the necessary data to co-produce area-specific weather forecasts with fishers, forecasters and other stakeholders. It will employ participatory approaches and technologies developed in the fields of human-computer interaction and ICT4D to co-produce and test effective, culturally appropriate communication platforms to disseminate weather forecast and provide feedback on the same. To account for variations in fishing techniques and technologies, and in the socio-economic organization of fishing, as well as different forms of social organization and cultural orientations the field-research will take place in three different fishing communities. These will be located, respectively, in Kanyakumari, Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts in South India, a stretch of coast with one of the densest concentrations of artisanal fishers in Asia, using diverse craft, gear and fishing methods in a geographically diverse setting.

The aid and development funding landscape for communication and social change (CSC) is changing rapidly. CSC is a field of scholarship and practice within communication studies concerned with the role of media and communication in processes of social change and development. Historically, much of the practice of CSC has been funded as part of international development cooperation. However, funds from traditional bilateral donors are shrinking, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, philanthropic foundations, especially those linked with tech-sector corporations, are growing in funding scale and programmatic influence. This context is accelerating the uptake of social entrepreneurship inspired discourses and worldviews in CSC practice. This worldview mirrors contemporary capitalist cultures and draws on new business management mantras, emphasising optimism, creativity, boldness, leadership and autonomy as an approach to 'changemaking'. Under this worldview, dependency on donors is seen as the main problem to avoid, and traditional aid and development is framed as having failed. For CSC practitioners on the ground there is validity in this assessment. Practitioners have reported that they see significant benefits from social entrepreneurship approaches, in that it enables them to be more bottom-up, to operate in less precarious and dependent ways, to be more adaptive to local needs, and to determine their own priority actions and approaches. However, this trend is in stark contrast with the momentum of current debates in academia, where of primary interest is in the role of communication in the resistance of global capitalism and in decolonization agendas. Social entrepreneurship discourses and the broader neoliberalisation of CSC are therefore seen as threats to, not enablers of, social justice. Un/Making CSC engages directly with these tensions, investigating the implications of growing entrepreneurial discourses within communication for social change (CSC) from a practitioner perspective. Theoretically, Un/Making CSC will engage in interdisciplinary ways with social entrepreneurship and leadership studies. Empirically it will use participatory and visual methods with practitioners, communities and other key stakeholders to interrogate the implications in terms of shifting CSC concepts, funding strategies, stakeholder relationships, and alternative frameworks. The research will be undertaken in two distinct sites: youth and girls engagement in Malawi which has historically been reliant on international development funding; and feminist digital justice efforts India, where there are complex tensions being negotiated in terms of funding sources, especially philanthropic funding, and the political principles of the organisation. The research aims to advance theory and practice on a justice-driven approach to communication for social 'changemaking'. The Fellowship enables the PI to firmly establish intellectual leadership and the shaping of new interdisciplinary research agendas engaging across communication and media studies, international development studies, and social entrepreneurship and leadership studies. The Fellowship is designed to develop skills and leadership capabilities in project management, methodological innovation, HE leadership, and public engagement and policy impact. This project partners with several well-established CSC organisations with experience of navigating these tensions, to co-develop insights, actionable frameworks and policy briefs for a social justice-driven approach to Communication for Social Changemaking. The Fellowship will positively impact the partner organisations within the life of the project, and lays the foundation for future policy-impact.