Changing Conceptions of Development and Changing Roles of the Media

Some preliminary thoughts

Some Key Questions

•Paradigms and Assumptions•What were the assumptions about the role

of “Communication” ?•What were the assumed relationship

between Media and Communication? •What role did Media play in early

development thinking?•Did change in Media Production change

the way we think about Development?•New Paradigm(s) of Development?

Paradigms and Assumptions

Paradigms of Development

▫ Western societies as a model – emphasis on economic growth

▫ Causes of underdevelopment inherent in the countries themselves

▫ Focus on the nation-state

▫ Emphasis on individual freedoms

▫ Vertical pattern of communication – from the elite to the people.

World systems perspective – development defined in terms of center and periphery

Underdevelopment ascribed to the industrialized capitalist powers of the West

Information gaps – underdevelopment in the periphery is prerequisite to development in the center

A country in the periphery must strive for self-reliance and liberation from the world system

Emphasis on social equality.

Modernization Dependences

Paradigms of Development

▫ Western societies as a model – emphasis on economic growth

▫ Causes of underdevelopment inherent in the countries themselves

▫ Focus on the nation-state

▫ Emphasis on individual freedoms

▫ Vertical pattern of communication – from the elite to the people.

World systems perspective – development defined in terms of center and periphery

Underdevelopment ascribed to the industrialized capitalist powers of the West

Information gaps – underdevelopment in the periphery is prerequisite to development in the center

A country in the periphery must strive for self-reliance and liberation from the world system

Emphasis on social equality.

Modernization Dependences

Mass media accorded a central role in the development process

The mass media reinforce the dominance of the metropole over its satellites

Criticisms of media and development

•Growing media concentration, ownership and content

•the hypodermic-needle model of media effects

•the need for social-structural changes•shortcomings of the classical diffusion-of-

innovations model•Limited effects of mass media•Lack of study or methodologies

•"American communication research has grown up in an atmosphere of behaviorism and operationalism, which has made it correct in technical methodology but poor in conceptual productivity.” Nordenstreng (1968)

Media as…• Tool for development• “Mobility multipliers” (Mass Media and

National Development, Schramm 1964)

• “diffusers of innovations” (E M Rogers, 1962, 1976, 1983)

• “Network”

•Early warnings on the limits of growth and environmental consequences

•Attributions of “underdevelopment”

First published in 1972

•"It is capitalism, world and national, which produced under- development in the past and still generates underdevelopment in the present" (Andre Gunder Frank, 1971:1).

•Multiple pathways to development

Everett Rogers

•“development 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 the people through their gaining greater control over their environment” (Rogers, 1975)

Everett Rogers

•Diffusion of Innovations and Development•field experiments and network analysis•communication effects gaps and audience

participation•Diffusion is uneven•Local innovation and local problem

solving

•“what is really new about communication technology is not the technology per se as much as the social technology of how the new communication devices are organized and used.” (1976: 34)

•Importance of interpersonal network in knowledge transmission (not through “opinion leaders”)

•4 main elements that influence the spread of a new idea: ▫the innovation, communication channels,

time, and a social system. •Diffusion is the process by which an

innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.

• Innovations progress through 5 stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation."

http://www.xolotech.com/2011/08/on-prowl-for-thought-leadership-falling.html

Emergence of the Participatory Paradigm

Post-war paradigm

•“free flow of information” – meanings and assumptions

•But how is this different from the “participatory” approach?

• Development assistance, technology and skills transfer

• Research, fact finding and dissemination

• Norm setting, principles and declarations

The McBride Commission Report (1985)•Self-reliance and cultural identity• international character of the media, their

structures, world-views and markets•Globalization: concentration of media

ownership, monopolization of markets, and a decline in diversity

•Emergence of the information society

The New World Information Communication Order (NWICO)

• The Four “Ds” ▫ Democratization▫ Decolonization▫ Demonopolization ▫ Development