Media and Critical Consciousness
An interactive talk focusing on thematic issues relating to media/journalism’s role vis-à-vis informing and educating people making them informed, educated and empowered citizens capable of protecting civil and democratic rights. The areas covered will include: emergence of commercial/corporate media promoting the concept and practice of McMedia, ethnic and rural-urban biases and their role in putting “others” in oblivion, issues of fake news, 5th Generation War and post-truth phenomenon, promoting jingoism, xenophobia and obscurantism and why media literacy and critical consciousness are important for watching the so-called watchdogs.
About the speaker
Mr. Mazhar Arif is a journalist, media critic, writer and researcher working as executive director of “Society for Alternative Media and Research” (SAMAR) since 2005, engaged with monitoring and analysis of electronic and print media’s contents.
He was member of faculty for a three-week international course on “Social movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America”, and his sessions were on “Media and critical consciousness”, held at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok; a panelist at international conference on ‘Impact of globalization on media ethics’ held at Colombo, Sri Lanka; panelist on “Media: Regulation or self-Regulation” at South Asian Media Summit held in Goa, India, and speaker at the plenary session on “Alternative Media” at World Social Forum held at Karachi. He talked at a session on “Media Democracy in Pakistan: Issues and Options” held under UNDP-CPNE joint Media Course on Decentralized Development Governance at Karachi.
He was member of media-expert team engaged by Friedrich Ebert Stuftung (Germany) to analyze Pakistani media for its Asian Media Barometer project (2009 and 2012). He was also a member of the team invited by Bank Information Center (Washington) at Manila, Philippines, to review “Information and Disclosure Policy” of Asian Development Bank.
He has been a speaker at annual literature festivals being held at Karachi and Islamabad for the past few years. As one of representatives of civil society, he remained member of Council of Complaints, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), from 2009 to 2013.
He has 25 years’ experience of journalism in English, Urdu and Seraiki languages, dozens of reports / articles on political, cultural, social, linguistic and environmental issues published in English (Herald, The Pulse, Dawn, Express Tribune, Daily Times, Pakistan Times, The Frontier Post), Urdu (Imroze, Jang) and Seraiki newspapers and magazines.
Mazhar Arif wrote a number of papers including “Revisiting Seraiki Question” presented at a conference at B. Z. University, Multan, “The Politicization of Education: Pakistan’s Unacknowledged Tribal People, Religious Minorities, and Regional Languages speakers in Education (ASPBAE—Published in Mumbai, India) © ASPBAE November 2008, “CSOs’ Accountability in Pakistan” which was included in the Asian Report on CSOs’ Accountability in Asia and “Education Justice: A Pre-requisite for Social justice” an overview of private sector in education.