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Mediating the agency of distant others: Proper distance in fair trade communication on Facebook

International Journal of Cultural Studies

Published online on

Abstract

To introduce economic justice into global trade, fair trade organizations strive to ‘shorten the distance’ between producers and consumers through mediation. This article problematizes the idea of ‘shortening the distance’ through the notion of maintaining the ‘proper distance’ in representing distant others. This perspective is used in narratological analysis of the content that fair trade organizations curate on their Facebook pages to represent Southern producers. The two organizations studied are: (1) Fairtrade Finland, a non-governmental organization (NGO); (2) Pizca del Mundo, a commercial brand in Poland. This article identifies the discursive and narrative forms of mediated agency that are offered to producers. The analysis revealed that Fairtrade Finland utilized Facebook to extend the narrative of producers as active subjects. By using the affordances of Facebook, Pizca del Mundo increased the mediated agency of producers but problematized the maintenance of the proper distance in their representations.