ABSTRACT
One question linking the analyses in this book is how does or can media empower/disempower audiences and lead to more – or indeed less – civic engagement. In this chapter I would like to take a step back from this question and interrogate one of the central concepts it uses: ‘empowerment’. This chapter asks how media research itself is potentially implicated in empowerment or disempowerment; in civic engagement or disengagement. At this stage, I aim to intervene in current debates about empowerment on a theoretical level only, linking existing empirical work to this key concept. My point of departure is a sense of unease I feel when observing how it is used today. It can seem that what is done in the name of (audience) empowerment leads only to a kind of tamed or contained power, a tamed engagement – whereas I believe the idea of em-powerment could open up much more radical political practices.
