Shared Communication proposal for the IC meeting 2010 – México City

The shared communication in the WSF and

the construction of Another Communiucation for Another Posible World

The WSF started to recommend ten years ago that alternative communication to the mainstream media be done in a shared (collective and colaborative) way. It was a joint proposal between the WSF and participants in alternative media, without rejecting other initiatives to publicize the WSF through the conventional press.

However the possibilities for the visibility of the forum in the market media ended up being the same as that experienced by the movements and organizations that make up the forum. When these organizations and movements carry out actions of resistance and alternatives to the current model, they are criminalized and caricatured. The image of the WSF in the media starts with confronting that which this media does to the universe of struggles and alternatives expressed in the WSF.

The challenge of communicating for Another Possible World has surged within the WSF and until then it was difficult to imagine: journalistic coverage based on a collective and open media pact between the WSF, the alternative media, marginalized spokespeople and communicators. The first Ciranda, in 2001, was an invitation to this pact, renewed in the following years and editions.

The neccesities have changed. The technologies have changed. The experiences have multiplied with other names, other protagonists, particularly in the continent in which the WSF was born, from the Casa Macunaima, in the Brazilian Social Forum, to the Minga de Movimientos Sociales, in the Social Forum of the Americas, to the Laboratory of Shared Communication, in the Panamazonic Social Forum, to the initiative Tequio, that developed within the Thematic WSF in Mexico, searching for young partners in the universities.

Every new initiative has strengthened the possibilities of sharing, adding or incorporating the previous initiatives, creating a fabric of connections that cannot be torn easily. Sometimes it is coverages and memories that need to be recuperated and preserved, such as the videos from Porto Alegre, Florence, Mali, Nairobi, Mumbai and Belem. At times, it is the collaborative but invisible practices, such as the different communities of free software that at this moment are putting into practice the same system for Ciranda, for the communication of the Conference of the Peoples about the Climate, in Bolivia, the platform of Enlazando Alternatives, in Madrid, and close to here, the site of Indymedia of Mexico.

The Communication of the WSF should be lareger than the WSF and this is the point.

The response we are still waiting for today

It is certain that many times the WSF was used as a laboratory of joint coverage and of the collaborative use of tools. This generated groups, initiatives and movements of communication, among youth who had the first contact with collective media experiences in the World Social Forum. And today they contribute to different organizations, media and movements. However, it is not possible to say that these groups continue considering communication within the WSF as their laboratory. We should think about this.

The motor of shared communication is the partnership between the WSF process and the media, in which the primary role is to stimulate encounters and exchanges and the second is to manage media coverage with autonomy and exchange of efforts. The objective is that this concept be carried to other universes, thematic and geographic spaces of the WSF, but this requires a policy, methodology and concrete interest on the part of the WSF in developing closer relationships with alternative collectives and media.

In 2004 and 2005, one hundred participants in the WSF working group on communication designed and carried out a group of initiatives to weave together the various expressions of the alternative media, which were integrated in four shared projects: Ciranda, Radio Foro, TV Foro and the Free Knowkedge Laboratory. An extensive report sent to the IC in the Netherlands showed the success of the experiênce and its potential to mobilize. The report proposed that shared communication be the communication policy of the WSF. It was proposed that the IC call a Seminar about communication

Understandably, the International Council was not yet aware enough to the strategic importance of communication because it required a cultural change for all of us – in which the desire for space in the media gives rise to the struggle for the integral right to communication. And without a response by the IC, over the following two years, the alternative media related more directly to the events of the WSF to which they had more access and proximity. The energy of these shared projects was not perceived by the IC as an opportunity to work together.

On the other hand, communication in the WSF has advanced. In 2007, the Commission of Communication of the IC was able to expand and approve a project – also started in 2005 – aimed at organizing the internal and external communication of the WSF on the basis of minimal budgets and based on the principle that the organizations of the IC could and should take over the activities (remunerated and unremunerated) contained in this project.

It was a different proposal, but it was not exclusive of the proposal of shared projects, and some items were reformulated to include the articulation of alternative media and the Forum de Radios. But it was an attempt at accommodation of very different processes, which would need to be understood differently.

The efforts of this committee, during the following three years, were decisive for the IC to be able to incorporate communication in the most sensitive themes. This was a breakthrough that eventually led the CI to ask: where does the communication policies of the WSF come from? Are they in agreement with the statement that Another World is Possible?

Within the limits that these issues pose, it is possible to affirm that the work of the Communication Commission has been transparent and open, and expresses a willingness to incorporate and value the relationship with alternative media. This commission must be supported by the International Council to do this.

But it is important to understand that this advance does not yet solve the demands of another process, one whose purpose is to mobilize for communication, and for this we are still waiting for a sign of welcome from the IC.

To actually implement a communication policy in the WSF it is necessary to convene all the movements, alternative media, social communicators and developers of tools and contents for a large discussion about this building. Which practices, which tools, fighting, and alternative communication strategies should we share so that the universe of WSF will advance in its collective right to communication?

Only this call will bring those movements for communication and media-makers who are among us and among the movements ih which we are also, which did not leave the WSF, that participate in its events, but they do not understand communication in the WSF as a huge collective and shared construction where their contribution will be essential.

We strongly believe that this call must be made by the WSF International Council, ensuring the conditions neccesary for this large and open debate to be realized as one of the urgencies of the World Social Forum.

Ciranda & Shared Projects