As media organisations dedicate less money and resources to journalism covering issuesrelating to development and social change, NGO’s are becoming increasingly visible as newscreators, funders and enablers. NGOs and media organisations are now frequentlycollaborating and even making partnerships to produce news content, which is having wide-ranging effects on the field of journalism.These phenomena coincide with the wide diversification of the news media landscape overthe past 2 decades, with a generation of ‘new media’ organisations rising up to challengethe dominance of legacy media entities, and bringing with them new practices andunderstandings of journalistic values.Where previous research has centred on the ‘blurring of roles’ between traditionalmainstream media outlets and NGOs, this thesis explores partnerships between NGOs and‘new media’ organisations which are not necessarily grounded upon the core practices ofprofessional journalism, using a case study of a recent ‘content partnership’ between the UShuman rights NGO Human Rights Watch, and the viral content website Upworthy.Given the vertiginous rise of digital media organisations over the past two decades, suchpartnerships could have a significant impact on how both NGOs communicate, and howmedia entities interact with NGOs, raising questions over journalistic standards, the powerdynamics between NGOs and the media, and even the viability of ‘objective’ news coveragein the future.To interrogate these issues, this thesis studies articles and videos produced as part of thepartnership between Human Rights Watch and Upworthy through statistical and textualanalyses, taking primary theoretical inspiration from Kate Wright’s “Moral Economies:Interrogating the Interactions of NGOs, Journalists and Freelancers”, (2016) and MatthewPowers’ Beyond Boon or Bane; Using normative theories to evaluate the newsmakingefforts of NGOs (2017).The findings of this study could be of use to NGO practitioners and journalists who areconsidering engaging in an NGO-media partnership, as well as to journalism, media anddevelopment researchers.

Denmark has one of the toughest immigration laws in Europe and legislation has become even tighter. Amid this political climate, a gleam of hope in the form of a refugee and asylum-seeker community centre was established. This centre is called Trampoline House and works to provide refugees and asylum-seekers a place of refuge, hope and community. Inside this centre, we find an art gallery, Centre for Art on Migration Politics (CAMP) dedicated to exhibiting artworks discussing questions of displacement, migration, immigration and asylum. The gallery, in partnership with Trampoline House, hosts events, workshops and talks that encourage cultural exchange between artists, users of Trampoline House and others.Focusing on a particular exhibition, Decolonising Appearance, curated by Nicholas Mirzoeff, that deals with migration and decolonialism, this study attempts to unpack the art gallery’s communication approaches in order to identify strategies for transformative dialogue and social change. Issues of how political and artistic practices intersect are discussed within the framework of voice and appearance (Appadurai 2004, Couldry 2010 & Arendt 1958). By focusing on appearance and re-appearance, this paper examines how notions of voice and capacity may inform the gallery’s decolonial artistic practices.The study finds that while CAMP has ambitions to create dialogue through strategies of artistic interventions, art events and an art gallery guide programme where participants are recruited from Trampoline House, there is a disconnect between what it strives to be, and what it is. Although the vision of CAMP is to build bridges and create cultural exchanges these are only successful to varying degrees. In order to succeed in this vision, the approaches must be more inclusionary and embrace a wider segment of society.

Sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls is a major challenge across the world which requires engaged and sustained action to see change (Abramowitz and Moran, 2012). Communication for Development approaches are often used in GBV-prevention programmes because they provide a means of engaging people at a community-level, whether that is through one-way behaviour-change messages on mass media or through participatory community projects engaging people in dialogue. Through analysis of the Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) Project on ‘Engaging Faith-Based Organizations to Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls and Increase Survivors’ Access to Services (2015-2017)’, this degree project explores the question of whether engaging with the faith-realities of communities will increase the depth of participation amongst participants. The ERD project focusses on equipping faith leaders, both Muslim and Christian, to engage in activity which shares GBV-prevention messages with their congregations and points victims and survivors to relevant support services. From the available data, it is not possible to conclusively argue that engagement with the faith context enhanced the depth of participation. However, applying three of Freire’s concepts, namely conversion to the people, dialogue and context, I argue that the ERD project aligns with Freire’s conceptualisation of participation more closely than similar projects that are ‘faith blind’.

This research studies how participatory theatre (PT) as a communication tool can promote development and social change in the city. Using a project developed in Johannesburg (SA) that engages the city’s socio-spatial concerns through performance, the paper analyses the participatory creative process utilised and in which ways it opened a space for debate and critical thinking. The objects of the study are the medium (the theatre), the context (the urban) and the creative stakeholders (the participants) and how they influence each other when creating the fictional space of the performance.  The findings suggest that, after participating in the performance’s making process, stakeholders have enhanced their ability to connect their lived experiences with the social-spatial issues of the city and have a better knowledge of the topics covered in the play. One significant aspect of this project is that the participatory approach has given participants a unique opportunity to exchange personal views of the city and find commonalities, and theatre has provided the medium to represent, negotiate and transform their relationship with the city.

The increasing accessibility and sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in generating high-quality images and texts presents opportunities, risks, and ethical dilemmas in the Communication about Development (ComDev) sector. This dissertation asks: how do ComDev professionals navigate the ethics of using AI to create visual and written content to raise funds and motivate action on global social issues? Drawing on the idea that AI ethics cannot be understood or achieved independent of a broader ethical structure, the project develops a theoretical framework of ethical storytelling, suggesting this can be successfully applied to AI and non-AI-generated content. Based on semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of the resulting transcript, findings can broadly be categorised into concerns regarding intentional manipulation and misleading through the use of AI tools, as well as unintentional harm caused by biased models and outputs. The participants' reflections revealed an interest in and concern with ethical storytelling. The way in which these ethical concerns and proposed strategies for mitigation are navigated supports the thesis that the same ethical storytelling framework can be applied to content creation and outputs regardless of the techniques used to generate it. The findings illustrate a tension between ethical storytelling and practical considerations related to fundraising experienced by ComDev professionals as they consider the risks and opportunities of this emerging technology. This conclusion contributes to, and supports findings within, an existing body of research on how people working in this sector navigate the complexities and ethical dilemmas of their work.

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This paper aims to discuss the video art work of Thando Mama as an example of a black South African video artist. It takes in mind the reality that video art in South Africa has high entrance barriers due to the technological knowledge resources needed to practice thus becomes an elite art. The paper also contextualises video art within its historical practice as an avant garde art as well as its social development usage. Mama's videos are a tool to communicate identity issues as represented in contemporary art with a particular focus on the South African experience.

Changing the approach to communication and engagement with the local people in Liberia during the Ebola response turned out to be a key strategy in the Red Cross’ work. The Liberian Red Cross’ communication with the crisis-affected people changed significantly during the fight against the Ebola virus, from top-down information to a more dialogical communication approach. The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has caused more than 11 000 deaths since the outbreak in March 2014. The task of defeating the virus seemed overwhelming at times, but the outbreak finally stopped and all the three worst hit countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia were declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization. Communication with and participation of the people the aid organizations target have been a central issue for discussion within the international community and development agencies for a long time. During the Ebola response it was clearly stated that communicating and engaging with the people living in the affected area was a core approach during and after the response. This thesis explores how one of the responding humanitarian organizations, The Red Cross, used communication with the crisis affected people in Liberia as a tool in their response to help stop and prevent the virus from spreading. The study is done as a case study. Main components of the case, and focus for the analysis, are semi-structured interviews with staff and volunteers from the Liberian Red Cross that worked with communication and operational activities during the Ebola response. Red Cross documents from the Ebola response, policy, planning, evaluation and training-documents, are also important part of the case.

This research is aimed at discussing the impact of participatory communication on empowering, increasing agency, and mobilizing citizenship that fosters social change. I conducted my fieldwork with a group of 21 youth (seven women and 14 men), with ages ranging from 15 to 30 years, who reside in Ataúro, Timor-Leste. This group participates in a community wall-newspaper founded in 2008. The methodologies applied were participant observation and qualitative interviews. The text is divided into three chapters; the first explores the societal structure and the constructing of youth, and the process of resignification of youth roles and identities from the work of young people in the community newspaper. In the following chapter, the internal dynamic of the newspaper group is analysed through the participatory communication framework, elaborating on empowerment processes and showing how this promotes changes and continuities in traditional structures. Finally, the last chapter looks at interactions of the group with their community and the way the negotiation between new and traditional practices develops. Youth are more empowered and the changes occurring throughout the participatory process suggest that ruptures and continuities between conserving and changing traditional practices, and the perception of ‘youth’ in the community, are occurring.