Development means
development of the bottom 50 percent of a country.
Mohammed Yunus,
Founder of the Grameen Bank, Bangaladesh.
Development communication has
been defined in several ways by economic development experts, sociologists, and
communication experts. The terminology development communication originated in Asia , the definitions given by the communication experts
of this region gained currency. Still definitions differ from region to region
depending on the definers view of development. Nora Quebral defined development
communication as the art and science of human communication applied to the
speedy transformation of a country from poverty to a dynamic and social
equality and the larger fulfillment of human potential. Development
communication, the all-encompassing term, is occasionally very widely defined
as "the discipline and practice of communication in the context of
developing countries."
Development communication is
concerned with the role of communication in social change. Development
communication grew out of the field of agricultural communication. The term was
coined to include under it apart from agricultural development, other areas of
national development such as population, nutrition, health, education, housing
and employment etc.Since all these areas require communication input
development communication was considered an appropriate term to describe the
scope, direction, structure of the discipline.
Srinivas R. Melkote and H. Leslie
Steeves states " The second half of 20th century brought a tradition of
communication research and practice geared toward Third World development
needs, an area that has come to be known as development communication."
In 1950s and 1960s research on
communication and development was conducted on third world people and societies
for achieving policy objectives of the US government. Third world people
were objects to be molded in whatever shape desired by the western policy
makers.
Development communication is
described as the systematic use of communication in support of national
developmet.The individuals who conceived development communication/journalism
in 1960s believed that there should be better trained and informed economic
specialists among the communicators, since national development depends on
economic growth, to cover fully, impartially and simply the numerous problems
of developing nations.
Development communication needs
and expectations are subjective categories. There are three sets of problem
related to it:
- Behavior orientations with respect to all media (radio, TV, Cinema, press, oral channels)
- Affective orientations with regard to the major national development and communications expectations, needs and constraints and possibilities.
- Cognitive orientations with respect to major national development and communication strategies and policies.
The assumption
is that future is built as a result of interactions between people and
socio-economic and technological possiblilities.Once we gain a deeper
understanding of the directions of change, we may define with greater measure
of confidence our feasible region of action.
Development
communication has to deal with two types of audience:
·
The communicators comprising development
bureaucracy, media practitioners and professionals
·
The people-the audience who can be informed and
uninformed, educated , semi-literate and literate.
The effectiveness of the
development communication depends on the type and kind of audience, image of
development bureaucracy and the interpretation of media practitioners which
affect the interpretations of communication and its persuasive efficacy.
Wilbur Schramm was one of the
first to recognize that communication could play an important role in the
national development of the third world countries. He believed that mass media
could better the lives of people by supplementing the information resource and
exposing people for learning opportunities.
Schramm's conceptualization of
the interaction between mass communication and development became the focus of
many development programmes. Developments in communication were brought about
by the economic, social and political evolution and vice-versa. He advocated
the use of big and little media or a combination of both according to the
development task, the targeted audience and the resources available.
The development communication
model that Schramm proposed in the 1960s had limited success in third world
countries. Bullet theory of communication and trickle-down development
theory did not work. Development scholars in the 1970s and 1980s recognized
and agreed with Schramm's assertion that group activity at the village level is
important for village development, bottom-up and horizontal communication among villagers is as important as top-down
communication from the central government to the villagers.
The general role of Devcom is to
create the human environment necessary for development to succeed. The specific
concept of development communication identified it with information, education
and communication.
Devcom is purposive,
goal-directed, educative and always associated with some programme for
desirable planned change. It is action-oriented since it helps people in gaining
better control over their environments by the use of appropriate technology for
communication.Devcom negotiates to change attitudes towards development rather
than to convert and persuade. It either supports a component approach to
development programmes as advocated later by the development practitioners and
theorists.
Development communicatin(DC)
is the study of social change brought about by the application of communication
research, theory, and technologies to bring about development. Development is
defined as a widely participatory process of social change in a society,
intended to bring about both social and material advancement, including greater
equality, freedom, and other valued qualities, for the majority of people
through their gaining greater control over their environment. For example, DC
promotes social changes leading to improved nutritioin, family planning, better
health, higher literacy, and improved agricultural production in developing
countries by means of more effective communication. The experts seeking to
bring about this type of social change are typically different culturally from
the people receiving the development assistance, so heterophily is involved.
Histories of DC are Mowlana and Wilson
Prerequisites of Devcom:
- Human and localized approach to communication rather than abstract and centralized
- Credibility and role of communication links for development-both media and interpersonal links
- Access to communication.
Participatory theories on development criticized
the modernization paradigm on the grounds that it promoted a top-down,
ethnocentric and paternalistic view of development. They argued that the
diffusion model proposed a conception of development associated with a Western
vision of progress. Development communication was informed by a theory that
“became a science of producing effective messages”. After decades of
interventions, the failure to address poverty and other structural problems in
the Third World needed to be explained on the
faulty theoretical premises of the programs. Any intervention that was focused
on improving messages to better reach individuals or only change behavior was,
by definition, unable to implement social change.
Development theories also criticized traditional
approaches for having been designed and executed in the capital cities by local
elites with guidance and direction from foreign specialists. Local people were
not involved in preparing and instrumenting development interventions.
Interventions basically conceived of local residents as passive receivers of
decisions made outside of their communities, and in many cases, instrumented
ill-conceived plans to achieve development. Governments decided what was best
for agricultural populations, for example, without giving them a sense of
ownership in the systems that were introduced.
Development Threshold and
Development Gap
Human and localized approach
suggests communication efforts tailored to the needs and psychological
dispositions of people and the development threshold of people. That means the
entrance or the beginning of the development should be as per the local
perception.
There is a need to bridge the
Communication gap between the technical specialists with expertise in specific
areas of knowledge (such as health, agriculture and literacy) and potential users.
So that they could utilize such knowledge and its specific applications to
improve the performance.
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Socio-Economic Benefits Gap
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Knowledge Gap
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Communication Gap
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More and more development theorists
and practitioners are being convinced that "development threshold" is
significant for development communication. This concept suggests being
receptive to development to a certain point. For example, there is a marked
difference between the development threshold of rural and urban society,
between elites and masses, men and women within the urban and rural society.
These differences in the threshold are termed as "development gap".
Development gap is identified with socio-economic gap, Knowledge gap and
communication gap. Development gap suggests that people in different
development thresholds need different development communication handling for
effective development. The development-gap hypothesis is that patterns of
communication which may lead the have-nots away from the mainstream of
development thus creating gap between the haves and have-nots.
Communication
Perspective on Development
In the context of development,
fundamental purpose of human communication is to understand the reality in order
to achieve goals and select other subsequent goals. Thus understanding and
mutual understanding is fundamental to the process of communication itself. A
circular communication is necessary at all levels with several loops of
feedback and feed-forward to arrive at mutual understanding. A development
communication model is based on the communication patterns for development
discussion information and feedback, about the development programmes, problems
and needs and the relationship among these communication links. (Various mass media channels are feasible
communication links for the IEC-information, education & communication
function of Devcom.)
No national consensus or
individual change can take place without dialogue:
a) Within groups of people with
homogeneous needs,
b) Between groups of people with
different needs, and
c) Between the public and
planners (e.g. government agencies, private voluntary organizations) claiming
to meet their needs.
This implies horizontal
communication within and between groups in which people are organized (e.g.
women's groups, caste groups, religious groups).This implies vertical,
bottom-up, people-to-planner information flows on needs, priorities, and
preferred modes of meeting them. And it also includes top-down,
planner-to-people information flows in response to community information they
receive. Information has to keep flowing three ways in a never-ending
spiral as it were, first horizontally and then up, and then back down,
continuously, and on a variety of issues. The dialogue at each loop or
circle of the spiral may sometimes it may not. But the spiral-shaped system
must keep information flowing constantly if national development is to be
broad-based and self-sustaining.
Communications perspective on
development defines development as the construction of particulars set of
relationships, roles and patterns of actions and communication as
the process by which those are created.
The strategy of defining certain
human behavior as not communicative orients development of communication
strategists and practitioners into unproductive lines of thought and action.
That a great many of actions
people perform are caused by social conditions over which people have no
control and a great deal of what people do to one another is not the result of
conscious, knowledge or choice. Social action always occurs in the context of
unacknowledged constraints and unintended consequences.
Analysis of development from
communication perspective indicates that many social actions not defined as
communication are communication for development efforts. For instance, direct
action such as building roads, enacting legislation to break up
exploitative linkages and message transmission through mass media
and interpersonal chhanels.These three express and reconstitutes the social
reality of the actors in Development communication situation.
Communications perspective on
development defines communication not as a category of acts but as a
perspective from which to look at any given act. Everything that one does
or does not do can be looked at as having message value from the
communication perspective; human actions are seen as a process by which persons
collectively maintain and create social reality by drawing on the resources of
their social reality and from the practices in which they are engaged with
others. The communication perspective allows interpretative and critical
analysis and improved communication.
International development
theorists and practitioners have conceptualized development from various
perspectives such as:
Social change
Modernization
Progress
Alternations in life-styles
But all the perspectives have
encompassed 'growth'-the economic growth, viz industrialization and agrarian
growth; social growth, viz structural and value changes.
The perspectives have changed not
only due to Paradigmatic changes but also due to global changes in:
Social setting
Economy
Polity (The form or process of government)
Technology
Communications
These perspectives have changed
the concept of development, how to do development and why the development
successes do not proportionate with the development efforts of the developing
countries.
The development issues and
sub-issues are directly related to developing countries but they are also the
major concerns and involvement of developed countries. Thus development is
envisioned as the interdependent efforts of both developing and developed
countries. Communication is significant component in how to do development
effectively.
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