World Social Forum
Stephansen, H. 2020. World Social Forum. in: Baker, M., Blaagaard, B., Perez Gonzales, L. and Jones, H. (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media London Routledge.
| Chapter title | World Social Forum |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephansen, H. |
| Editors | Baker, M., Blaagaard, B., Perez Gonzales, L. and Jones, H. |
| Abstract | This entry will begin by providing an overview of the history and development of the World Social Forum (WSF), situating it within the broader context of the global justice movement that emerged in the mid-1990s. Highlighting its unique character as a meeting place for civil society actors from diverse backgrounds – and thus a site of tension between different political traditions – the entry will survey key scholarly and activist debates about the WSF. It will examine controversies about the forum’s supposed status as an ‘open space’, relating this to broader debates about openness and horizontality in social movements and the rise of ‘networked politics’ facilitated by new communications technologies (Juris 2008). Scholarship that has theorized the WSF from a postcolonial perspective will also be covered, focusing on the forum’s potential to advance alternative political and epistemological paradigms (Santos 2006; Conway 2012). The entry will then turn to focus more specifically on the WSF’s relationship to citizen media. Although a concern with media and communications has been largely absent from the literature on the WSF, the forum has provided an important meeting place for media activists from around the world, who have gathered both to produce alternative media coverage of the forum and put media and communications issues on the agenda of global civil society. The entry will discuss the development of transnational networks of media activists within the WSF and the possible emergence of a movement focused on media and communication. |
| Keywords | World Social Forum |
| Anti-Globalization | |
| Alter-Globalization | |
| Global Justice Movement | |
| Global Public Sphere | |
| Citizen Media Practices | |
| Open Space | |
| Epistemology of the South | |
| Book title | Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media |
| Year | 2020 |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 30 Sep 2020 |
| Place of publication | London |
| ISBN | 9781317215073 |
| File | |
| Web address (URL) | http://citizenmediaseries.org/published_volumes/routledge-encyclopedia-of-citizen-media/ |