Information, Medium & Society: Twenty-second International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

A critical aspect of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and decolonial practice in research is the engagement of community members throughout the research process inclusive of the forging of a meaningful partnership in the knowledge generation and dissemination process. However, when working with historically marginalized communities where mistrust of researchers and/or the knowledge generation process may exist because of past and/or present social injustices, developing social trust is a necessary component at every stage of the process. Through a series of critical reflections coupled with a succession of exchanges with communities, as community practitioners and community engaged researchers, we have been able to develop a process for community engagement and dissemination that involves critically reflexive questions we ask ourselves as researchers embarking on the process of engaging diverse communities as partners in knowledge. This paper details the critically reflexive questions that inform our praxis with transnational immigrant communities in Canada spanning three continents (North America, Africa and Asia). Specifically, this paper will discuss the key themes and core strategies we have employed in our work for developing trust, the co-creation of flexible dissemination plans, being receptive to and learning from criticism, and implementing input from community members to name a few. Ultimately, the essence of this paper is to convey that the theory and practice of scholarly communication cannot be limited to performative action and abstract propagandizing if they are to truly reflect individual, communal and societal diversity for the purposes of generating impactful modes of social knowledge production.