Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

One of the well-rehearsed strategies of authoritarian control is surveillance. While technologies enable new modes of surveillance, the power and control of surveillance is reproduced through human participation. Mechanisms of surveillance are perfected and reproduced by willing subjects that participate in the reproduction of surveillance (Andrejevic, 2002, 2007; Dubrofsky, 2011; Fuchs, 2017; Owen & Imre, 2013). Those that participate in these mechanisms are led to believe that they will somehow be rewarded by the structures. With each new technology, authoritarian powers invent new mechanisms of control. The power of authoritarianism lies precisely in the threat that one will be found out if they did or said anything that challenges the control of the structure. Surveillance works toward silencing critique through the culture of fear it reproduces. Inherent in the reproduction of this culture of fear is the prevalence of mechanisms of surveillance. Everyday interact...

Outside of the disciplinary framework of communication scholarship that systematically examines communication processes, communicative phenomena, messages, and their effects in the realms of health, science, and risk, mostly originating from within the Communication discipline in the U.S. and published in the top-tier disciplinary and sub-disciplinary journals, claims to expertise in science, health, and risk communication are often made by outsiders to the discipline of Communication in other parts of the world. This certainly seems to be the case in significant proportions of science, health, and risk communication being done, taught, and launched across the Asia-Pacific. A quick survey of these new and market-driven forays into science, health, and risk communication would suggest they have little grounding in and little to do with the scientific study of communication. Reviewing these programs, I often come away disappointed, and more importantly, with the recognition that our...

from #fieldnotes2011 When the tides of voices emerging from the margins, tell their stories, they offer lessons that disrupt your draconian rules. When the tides of voices emerging from the margins speak their truth, they shake up the lies that you have carefully woven. When the tides of voices emerging from the margins, sing their songs, they sow the seeds of hope. When the tides of voices emerging from the margins, make new rhythms, they remind you the end of your repression is near.