What is Communication for Development?

1. What is Communication for Development? JMS3 JDD 2006 From: Melcote and Steeves

2. Communication for development • “People cannot be liberated by a consciousness and knowledge other than their own.” - Fals-Borda • Emphasis on the organisational value of communication (as opposed to its transmission value) and how it may be harnessed to help empower marginalized groups and communities.

3. Modernisation paradigm • Ironically, ‘development’ is nowadays associated with greater poverty levels. • The premise has been that when nations develop, they reduce poverty – this hasn’t happened in many parts of the world. • This suggests that the nature and method of development is wrong • 3 qualities of modernisation theory and practice have contributed to a situation where development produced deprivation and human misery, especially in the Third World:

4. 1. Blaming the victim • Ideological process of justifying inequality in society by finding defects in the victims of inequality. • “It is a brilliant ideology for justifying a perverse form of social action designed to change, not society, as one might expect, but rather society’s victim.” (Ryan 1976)

5. 2. Social Darwinism • Believed that government interventions on behalf of the poor would have catastrophic results since they would interfere with the laws of natural selection. • Today’s victim blamers talk of ‘cultural deprivation’ instead of the earlier notion of race and class differences in intellectual ability and laziness is often replaced by a new term: ‘culture of poverty’ = provincial orientation, low formal participation, a lack of integration into national institutions, a strong present-time orientation, inability to defer gratification, and fatalism.

6. 3. Modernisation’s sustainance of unequal class structures • Blame the victim ideologists, social Darwinists, and the top-down experts of development, among others, have aimed to change the individual but leave the structure of dependency within and between societies intact. • Poverty is, um, a lack of money! • Ryan: “Poverty is an economic status etiologically related to the absence of both monetary input and access to income generating resources.”

7. So, surely the best strategy for overcoming poverty would be to bring every poor person above the poverty line through a transfer of resources. In the US, 2% of GDP would be required for this purpose. • But, poverty not seen as a lack of money, but the result of the lower-class culture of the poor or the traditional culture of the peasants. • The solution isn’t distribution of resources, but on how to transform the “way of life” of the poor, including deep-seated cultural beliefs and lifestyles.

8. An ethical perspective on development: • Value traditional cultures; • Consider all levels of society; • Involve people at the grassroots in all facets of the process; • Aim for just and fair distribution of rewards; • Prioritise basic needs as defined by those who experience them.

9. The focus on unequal power dynamics has important implications – goal is no longer information delivery and diffusion. • Instead, goal is to work at the grassroots so people and organisations there may eventually have a voice in political, economic, and ideological processes.

10. Community empowerment paradigm • Implies change where community members influence the agenda, design and processes • But, empowerment requires: • Long-term process - cannot be acquired in a single workshop; • It “evolves through practice in a real-life situation” (Melcote and Steeves); • Labour-intensive process.

11. Role of DSC professional: • Never the central figure • A facilitator, collaborator, advocate • Locus of control is moved from outsiders (development experts, professional communicators, journalists) and to the individuals and groups directly affected (citizens).

12. Empowerment: • Provides skills, confidence and countervailing power to deal effectively with social change in a world that distributes needs, resources and power unequally. • Privileges multiple voices and perspectives and facilitates equal sharing of knowledge and solution alternatives among participants in process.

13. Participation-as-end approach • Participation as basic right (not merely means to measurable development goal) • Participatory action research methodology (PAR) • Aims to initiate collaborative social action and empower local knowledge • Consciousness raising, followed by reflection, leading to participatory social action. • Understanding the importance of local organisations; • Recognising that existing organisations are usually more effective than new ones, given strong and historic relational ties; • Knowing how organisations may provide a context and process for critical reflection leading to social action.

14. More specifically, the communication for development practitioner may be of help in the following areas: • Suggesting and facilitating activities that enhance experience and competence; • Enhancing group structure and capacity; • Removing social and environmental barriers; • Enhancing environmental support and resources. • In the end, the communication for development practitioner’s role should become redundant and he/she should withdraw.

15. Don Snowden, 1970s, Newfoundland, Canada • Video to build linkages and resolve conflicts between scientists and indigenous groups, and between fishing communities and politicians. • Fogo Island process allowed rural communities to express their demands and share their predicament on video with politicians in Ottawa. • Non-professionals can become skilled at using media: opens up opportunities for them to have access to, and control over, the tools for information and communication generation and exchange.

16. So what should be the role of the “journalist/ media professional/ development communicator”? • For some there is a role for the professional media team, trained in participatory approaches to act as facilitators with local communities. • Others have based all their work on the handing over of media skills to the community itself.

17. BUT, whatever the strategies, there is a danger of creating new exclusion zones. This can be the result of several different factors: • The location of equipment: In which town/village, in whose offices? Male, young population often finds a way to control resources. Children, women and the elderly less well represented. • Language: In a multilingual environment, development intervention must envisage a multilingual communication strategy - language of the community must play major role. What language will people have to work in to operate and use the technology? • Technology "literacy": How to give access to basic skills to large sections of the population? Focus on easy-to-use technologies and cultivate different approach by professionals who act as mediators/facilitators in the use of the technology.