Les théories critiques en communication pour le changement social : regard critique

Communication studies constitute a theoretical and epistemological field of research and as such aims to build meaning around observable social communication objects. Critical perspectives in this field have developed in several directions : ideological, economic, political, etc. However, critical theorists tend to overlook development communication as a research tool. (We should instead be talking about communication for social change, as agreed upon by researchers meeting in Douala in 2005 during an international colloquium on this theme). Thus, the phrase “communication for social change” is used throughout this article as an expression of the author's critical approach. Some authors, as we will see, avoid criticizing the divergence of the goal of social change towards the economic, financial and political dynamics that take on social structures in African, Asian and South American societies currently experiencing unprecedented forms of crisis. Instead of challenging social change perspectives, critics remain stuck within the globalization of the effects of ICTs and mass media on social change. The deterministic framework structuring critical thought is framed by the ideology of the superiority of “western” civilization and anticommunism inherited from the Cold War. Our field thus appears as a zone of transparency and consensus for critical perspectives on communication. Ultimately, I propose a communications approach that is critical of the social structures that shape the scientific production in the field of communication for social change