Social Change
Social change action with informed and engaged societies
Social Change
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Section 1: Community Dialogue and Collective Action: Communication for Social Change: An Integrated Model for Measuring the Process and Its Outcomes

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Summary

Section One: An Integrated Model of Communication for Social Change

Community Dialogue and Collective Action

The Integrated Model of Communication for Social Change (IMCFSC) describes an iterative process where "community dialogue" and "collective action" work together to produce social change in a community that improves the health and welfare of all of its members.


The development of a community can occur through a variety of change processes:

  • Externally generated change, such as the construction of potable water systems, roads and health clinics by outsiders that leads to a reduction in the prevalence of disease within the communities affected.
  • Individual behavior change, such as the adoption of chlorinated water, oral rehydration solutions for diarrhea and visits to local health clinics that, when aggregated, leads to a reduction in the prevalence of disease within the communities which experience sufficient individual change.
  • Social influence for individual behavior changes where individuals who adopt a new health behavior publicly advocate its adoption to other individuals, so that the rate of change (decline) in the prevalence of disease increases.
  • Community dialogue and collective action in which members of a community take action as a group to solve a common problem, such as high rates of diarrhea, lack of potable water and so forth, which leads not only to a reduction in the prevalence of disease within the community but also to social change that increases the collective capacity to solve new problems.


The IMCFSC was developed to describe the last type of change: community dialogue and collective action. The four types of change are not mutually exclusive. For example, externally-generated, government-development projects can also involve individual adoption of new behavior with social influence. A collective-action project, such as getting every household to eliminate stagnant water sources to eradicate the spread of dengue fever by mosquitoes, may require individual behavior change as a result of social pressure from neighbors. The integrated model draws from a broad literature on development communication that has developed in the early 1960s. In particular, the work of Latin American theorists and communication activists was used for its clarity and rich recommendations for a more people-inclusive, integrated approach for using communication for development (see, Bibliography). Likewise, theories of group dynamics (Cartwright and Zander, 1968; Zander, 1996), conflict resolution (Carpenter and Kennedy, 1988; Yankelovich, 1999), leadership (Scholtes, 1998), quality improvement (Tenner and DeToro, 1992; Walton, 1986), and future search (Weisbord and Janoff, 1995; Weisbord, et al., 1992), as well as the network/convergence theory of communication (Rogers and Kincaid, 1981; Kincaid, 1988) have been used to develop the model (see, Figure 2 on next page).