Communication for Social Change

This is the concept of an international group of practitioners, policy developers and funders exploring the most effective ways for communication interventions to support and promote development.

• A new, more complex communications environment
  
  
  
• Emerging development problems
  
  
  
• New models of communications
  
  
  
• Some implications for communications programming
  

The starting point - a new communications environment in developing countries

• Communications and Information Technologies
  
  
  
• Media liberalisation and fragmentation
  
  
  
• Economic and Cultural Globalisation
  

New information and communications technologies

• centralised control of information becomes difficult
  
  
  
• access to information increased
  
  
  
• capacity for social and political organisation beyond physical boundaries
  
  
  
• capacity to communicate unprecedented
  
  
  
• organisation moves from hierarchies to networks
  

BUT...an information chasm

• 62% of all telephone lines in the world installed in just 23 countries (15% of world's population)
  
  
  
• One quarter of all countries in the world have less than one telephone per 100 people
  
  
  
• 84% mobile phone subscribers; 91% fax machines; 97% internet host computers......are in developed countries
  

New fragmented media environments

• The end of government monopoly
  
  
  
• The growth of commercial media
  
  
  
• The growth of satellite broadcasting
  

BUT...

• globalisation leading to concentration of ownership of communications industries
  
  
  
• compounded by industry convergence
  

When behaviour change depends on social change

• HIV/AIDS
  
  
  
• Reproductive health and rights
  
  
  
• Tobacco
  

Communications for Social Change

• is decentralised, pluralistic and democratic
  
  
  
• seeks to empower rather than persuade
  
  
  
• fosters debate among and between citizens, among and between communities, between people and government
  

A rebalancing of programming…

Away from people as objects of change…and on to people and communities as agents of their own change



• Balancing the design and communication of “messages” with the fostering of dialogue and debate on key issues of concern
  
  
  
• Away from a focus on individual behaviours…and on to social norms, policies, culture and a supportive environment.
  
  
  
• Away from the conveying of information from technical experts…and on to sensitively placing that information into the dialogue and debate
  
  
  
• Away from persuading people to do something..and on to negotiating the best way forward in a partnership process
  
  
  
• The central role played by those most affected by the issues of concern
  

It implies

• surrendering the agenda
  
  
  
• creating capacities so that communities can set their own agendas, drive debates over their own future
  
  
  
• a less target oriented, product oriented approach
  
  
  
• Investing not only in specific communications interventions but in supporting a climate and environment of change and public debate eg. High quality journalism, equitable telecommunications, media regulation, community broadcasting, civil society
  

For more information, contact Denise Gray Felder denise@communicationforsocialchange.org