The Ethics of Reciprocal Communication

Abstract

This chapter critically reflects upon the meaning and ethics of maintaining reciprocal communication between researchers and activists in the context of studying activist media production practices. It engages with the tensions of maintaining distance and proximity to activist research, as well as of communicating and reflecting upon critique by exploring questions such as the possibilities of scholars to research activist practice without becoming activists themselves; the negotiation of power between scholars and activists, the forms that reciprocity can take and its limits. Not least, it prompts reflection on whether scholars should always be expected to reciprocate more than their activist informants. Contributing with a ‘thick ethical description’ (Sayer in Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), the essay builds upon fieldwork with a community of producers of the free 3D graphics animation software Blender in Amsterdam and urges us to think about the tensions of reciprocating and articulating critique of activist practices.