Más allá de las campañas de sensibilización: el empoderamiento comunicacional como estrategia de intervención social

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical reflection on the main limits of social intercultural social awareness, anti-racism or pro-coexistence, as it has been traditionally implemented in our country: its paternalistic humanitarianism, its functional interculturalism, the use of counter-arguing and its mediacentric and marketed forms of communication. From this critical analysis, communication empowerment is proposed as a strategy of social intervention that can allow the effective overcoming of such limits, within the framework of participatory communication. Based on our professional experiences in community practice, social intervention aimed at the achievement of communication empowerment should contemplate the development of the following dimensions: generate a feeling of communicative self-efficacy, incorporate technological appropriation, understand through critical reading of the media and reflexivity, acquire dialogical and participative skills, and develop the capacity to collaboratively create and develop communicative actions with impact on social imaginaries.