Dismantling Communicative Inequalities with Mohan Dutta

In today’s episode, we talk about how the study of communication can help us understand and resist social inequity. My guest is Prof. Mohan Dutta, Dean's Chair Professor of Communication at Massey University. He is the Director of the Center for the Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE). Prof. Dutta is the winner of the 2016 International Communication Association (ICA) Applied/Public Policy Communication Research Award, and the 2018 Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award. He serves on the Advisory Panel of the World Health Organization (WHO) Cultural Contexts of Health (CCH) group.

Mohan discusses how we can the CCA as a lens to better understand the current political environment, communication inequality, as well as communicative sovereignty. His take on disinformation, as a critical scholar myself, is one of the most thought-provoking I’ve heard

Here are a few of Mohan’s articles that relate to our discussion:

Dutta, MJ. (2023). Applied communication, witnessing, and decolonizing futures. Journal of Applied Communication Research. 51(6), 579-581

Elers, C., & Dutta, M. (2023). Academic-community solidarities in land occupation as an Indigenous claim to health: culturally centered solidarity through voice infrastructures. Frontiers in Communication. 8

Dutta, MJ. (2022). Communication as raced practice. Journal of Applied Communication Research. 50(3), 227-228

Dutta, MJ. (2022). De-centering the whiteness of applied communication research: some editorial strategies. Journal of Applied Communication Research. 50(2), 109-110

Māori Scholars on the role of disinformation (or myth-making) in colonisation

Jackson, M. (2018). Colonization as myth-making: A case study in Aotearoa. In Being Indigenous (pp. 89-101). Routledge.

Jackson, M. (2020). Where to next? Decolonisation and stories in the land in Imagining Decolinsation Bridget Williams Books

Mikaere, A. (2013). Racism in contemporary Aotearoa: A Pākehā problem. Colonising Myths-Maori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro, 92-126.

Miller, R. J., & Ruru, J. (2008). An indigenous lens into comparative law: the doctrine of discovery in the United States and New Zealand. W. Va. L. Rev., 111, 849.

Ngata, T. (2019). Kia Mau: resisting colonial fictions. Kia Mau Campaign.

Ritchie, J., Skerrett, M., & Rau, C. (2014). Kei tua i te awe māpara: Countercolonial unveiling of neoliberal discourses in Aotearoa New Zealand. International Review of Qualitative Research, 7(1), 111-129.