Communication and Engagement for Social Justice

From mass to interpersonal media, from citizen to governmental or corporate interactions, a communication for peaceful social change involves different screens, spaces, creative resources, means of expression, and actors. All utterances, all messages, all images-both through direct experience (interpersonal communication) or through representation (mediated communication such as art, media, or education)-relate together in the identities of individuals and their participation in private and collective spheres. These communication scenarios can become empowering processes when defined from the agency of individuals and geared toward social justice. The communicative action of present-day citizen movements demonstrates this point. In this light, this essay focuses on communication's role of empowering civil society's participation in transformative political, peaceful actions for social justice. We explore how communication can help build awareness of social injustice and jumpstart and maintain such social action through continued engagement. On the one hand, this study aims to better understand how society can become aware of the violent and unjust effects of certain actions, their cultural and symbolic consequences, and how they are connected to social injustice (especially of certain communicative behaviors). On the other hand, we promote a communicative and educative project that addresses violence and injustice by developing sensitivity to the suffering of others. We argue that it is this feeling of responsibility that leads people to act in order to eradicate such practices.