Listening and learning for public engagement with research

Abstract

What is the possibility of community radio operating as a public engagement platform for the dissemination of publicly funded and socially relevant research? Are there ways that community development techniques, along with community-focussed communication methodologies, can be used to support inclusive and sustainable forms of public engagement for research, that go beyond goal-oriented and transactional forms of corporate and industrial mass media? The assertion here is that with the pressing demands of collective social transformation associated with the Great Disruption, there is an urgent need to revitalize the community development mindset of public engagement with—and using—established and emergent forms of media. This renewed mindset offers an extended approach to community-oriented communication that goes beyond the prevailing and standard forms of news reporting, marketing, public relations and mass media information distribution. In other words, the forms of media engagement that typically characterize much of the commercial and institutional communication practices. Instead, and as explored here, there is a need to foster an alternative communications mindset that embeds participative, mutual and developmental expectations of care, stewardship and social justice as foundational principles of communication and media for public engagement for social and academic research.