ABSTRACT
This entry begins by providing an overview of the history and development of the World Social Forum (WSF), situating it within the broader context of the global justice movement that emerged in the mid-1990s. Highlighting its unique character as a meeting place for civil society actors from diverse backgrounds – and thus a site of tension between different political traditions – the entry surveys key scholarly and activist debates about the WSF. It examines the forum’s various exclusions, controversies about its supposed status as an ‘open space’ and the question of political efficacy, tensions between different political cultures and traditions, the relationship between the local and global, and debates about whether the WSF can be conceptualised as a global public sphere. The entry then turns to focus more specifically on citizen media in the WSF process. Although a concern with media and communications has been largely absent from the literature on the WSF, the forum has provided an important meeting place for media activists from around the world, who have gathered to produce alternative media coverage of the forum, build networks, and put media and communications issues on the agenda of global civil society. The significance of citizen media within the WSF process is not limited to their capacity to disseminate information but extends to a range of practices such as capacity-building, networking and movement-building.
