Abstract
Democracy and democratization have become universal norms and organizing principles that validate various forms of world governance and statehood. In particular in emerging and dependent economies, the policies and programs behind development aid have expanded their jurisdiction to include democracy, human rights, and good governance, along with policies of global neoliberalism. Notwithstanding the holding of regular elections, there is a need to keep identifying specific reasons why most emerging economies have witnessed little or no significant improvement in democracy, human rights, or good governance. This chapter focuses on the ambiguity reflected in the discourse of global public diplomacy deployed by purveyors of democracy and contestants of world influence, who double as Cold War warriors and democracy promoters. Discourse has become a creative and mutating technique used to co-opt not only the language of what used to be dissenters of global neoliberalism, but also international non-governmental organizations regarded as symbols of independent global civil society. The chapter proposes cyber communications as alternative tools for a new form of global civil society and citizens’ media that can promote genuine grassroots initiatives and disambiguate the discourse of the cosmopolitics of democratization through cyber activism and education.
Jean-Claude Kwitonda’s research interests include global neoliberalism, especially its various meanings. In this chapter he proposes cyber communications as alternative tools for a new form of global civil society and citizens’ media.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Brenner, Neil, and Theodore, Nik. 2002. Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’. Antipode 34: 349–79, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444397499.
Castells, Manuel. 2008a. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. In The Rise of the Network Society, Vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Castells, Manuel. 2008b. The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616: 78–93. doi: abs 10.1177/0002716207311877.
Castells, Manuel, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, and Araba Sey. 2006. Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Chossudovsky, Michel. 2002. The Globalization of Poverty: The Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms. London: Zed Books.
Cornwall, Andrea. 2007. Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development Discourse. Development in Practice 17: 471–484. doi:10.1080/09614520701469302.
Dutta, Mohan. 2004. The Unheard Voices of Santalis: Communicating about Health from the margins of India. Communication Theory 14: 237–263. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2004.tb00313.x.
Dutta, Mohan. 2006. Theoretical Approaches To Entertainment Education Campaigns: A Subaltern Critique. Health Communication 20: 221–231. doi:10.1207/s15327027hc2003_2.
Frank, Thomas M. 1992. The emerging right to democratic governance. The American Journal of International Law 86: 46–91.
Freire, Paulo. 1970. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. and ed. M. B. Ramos. New York: Herder and Herder.
Gowan, Peter. 2006. Triumphing Toward International Disaster. Critical Asian Studies 36: 3–36. doi:10.1080/1467271042000184562.
Guilhot, Nicolas. 2005. The Democracy Makers. New York: Columbia University Press.
Jones, Cara, and Donovan-Smith, Orion. 2015. How the West Lost Burundi. Foreign Policy, 1–15. Retrieved on January 8, 2017, from http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/28/how-the-west-lost-burundi/.
Klepeis, Peter, and Colin Vance. 2003. Neoliberal policy and deforestation in southeastern Mexico: An assessment of the PROCAMPO program. Economic Geography 79: 221–240. doi:10.1111/j.1944-8287.2003.tb00210.x.
Kwitonda, J. Claude. 2016. Development Aid and Disease Discourse on Display: The Mutating Techniques of Neoliberalism. Journal of Critical Discourse Studies, 14. doi:10.1080/17405904.2016.1174139.
Larner, Wendy, Heron, Richard, and Lewis, Nicholas. 2007. Co-constructing “After Neoliberalism”: Political Projects and Globalizing Governmentalities. In Neoliberalization: States, Networks, Peoples, ed. England Kim and Ward, 223–247. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Leal, P. Alejandro. 2007. Participation: The Ascendancy of a Buzzword in the Neo-Liberal Era. Development in Practice 17: 539–548. http://dx.doi.org/10.3362/9781780440095.008.
McPhail, Thomas. 2010. Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders, and Trends. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Mydans, Seth. 2007. Myanmar Comes Face to Face with a Technology Revolution. International Herald Tribune.
Ngwainmbi, K. Emmanuel. 2000. Africa in the Global Infosupermarket: Perspectives and Prospects. Journal of Black Studies 304: 534–552.
Rahnema, Majid. 1990. Participatory Action Research: The “Last Temptation of Saint” Development. Alternatives XV: 199–226. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40644681.
Ren, Hai. 2005. Modes Of Governance In Neo-Liberal Capitalism: An Introduction. Rhizomes, 10. Retrieved from http://www.rhizomes.net/issue10/introren.htm.
Rose, Nikolas. 1996. The Death of the Social? Re-figuring the Territory of Government. Economy and Society 25: 327–356. doi:10.1080/03085149600000018.
Sastry, Shaunak, and Mohan Dutta. 2011. Postcolonial Constructions of HIV/AIDS: Meaning, Culture, and Structure. Health Communication 26: 437–449. doi:10.1080/10410236.2011.554166.
Sastry, Shaunak, and Mohan Dutta. 2013. Global Health Interventions and the “Common Sense” of Neoliberalism: A Dialectical Analysis of PEPFAR. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6: 21–39. doi:10.1080/17513057.2012.740682.
Springer, Simon. 2012. Neoliberalism as Discourse: Between Foucauldian Political Economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies 9: 133–147. doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.656375.
Snow, Nancy. 2010. Public Diplomacy: New Dimensions and Implications. In Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders, and Trends, ed. Thomas McPhail, 84–102. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Thomas-Greenfield, Linda. 2017. Testimony of Assistant Secretary Linda Thomas-Greenfield Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee U.S. Policy in Central Africa: The Imperative of Good Governance. United State Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Retrieved January 2017 from http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021016_Thomas-Greenfield_Testimony.pdf.
Thompson, B., and John. 2005. The new visibility. Theory, Culture & Society 22: 31–51.
Uvin, Peter. 1999. Development aid and structural violence: The case of Rwanda. Development 42: 49–56. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110060.
Waisbord, Silvio. 2008. The institutional challenges of participatory communication in international aid. Social Identities 14: 505–522. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630802212009.
Ward, Kevin, and England, Kim. 2007. Introduction: Reading neo-liberalization. In Neoliberalization: States, Networks, Peoples, ed. England Kim and Ward, 1–22. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kwitonda, JC. (2017). The Role of Cyber Activism in Disambiguating the Cosmopolis and Discourse of Democratization. In: Ngwainmbi, E. (eds) Citizenship, Democracies, and Media Engagement among Emerging Economies and Marginalized Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56215-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56215-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56214-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56215-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)