Citizen Journalism, Social Brokers, and Accountability Challenges in Rural India

• In Event: Agents of Accountability: Monitors and Claimants in Accountability Processes

Abstract

Social accountability initiatives seek to deepen citizen engagement in efforts to hold officials to account between and beyond elections. Despite their proliferation, these initiatives yield mixed effects—raising questions about the conditions that foster citizen action and bureaucratic responsiveness. This article explores the role of social brokers, who, by sharing and framing information, craft mobilizing narratives targeted at citizens and at officials. Through a study of citizen journalists in rural India, I introduce three categories of social broker: mobilizers, who catalyze local collective action; fixers, who engage officials in problem-solving activities; and interlocutors, who do both. Interlocutors, I argue, are the most powerful among social brokers, impacting both civic engagement and material problem-solving. They are, however, also rare—requiring an elusive combination of community embeddedness and ties to the bureaucracy. Reflecting on these patterns, the article calls attention to the importance of social intermediaries in converting information into actionable narratives.

Author

• Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, University of Virginia