Gumucio Cfsc En

Communication for
Social Change
A key to participatory development

01/03/2007 Alfonso Gumucio Dagron

It is easy to write recipes, but
it´s difficult to communicate
with people

Franz Kafka

1-Mar-07 Alfonso Gumucio Dagron

Purpose of this presentation
♦ Position our understanding of
communication for social change
♦ Describe historic evolution of various
concepts around communication and
development
♦ Schematic, for the purpose of establishing
differences between trends and models


A look back in history…


After World War II …
♦ Major powers compete to gain control of regions
in the developing world
♦ Liberation struggles & decolonisation process in
Africa, Asia and Latin America
♦ The chessboard: domination by the force of
weapons or through co-operation and debt?
♦ New development paradigms are born – the
Marshall Plan
♦ Independences negotiated in Africa
♦ Rationalisation of war industry

Development context
♦ Patronising vision: to level the differences
between rich and poor countries
♦ Rise the income of poor rural families
♦ Expand consumer markets towards the south
♦ Technologies seen as the panacea
♦ Development understood as increased
productivity & trade
♦ Cold War: information & manipulation


Fifty years later…


The cemetery of development
Half century of missed opportunities:
♦ Water pumps without water
♦ Roads that lead nowhere
♦ Hospitals without health staff
♦ Schools without teachers & books
♦ Dusty video & radio equipment in state media
♦ Backyards full of rusty donated vehicles
♦ Immunisation rates down, HIV/AIDS up
♦ White elephants in Africa, Asia and Latin America


Who’s fault?
Planners Community
♦ Government ♦ Weak community
corruption organization
♦ Vertical planning from ♦ Illegitimate local
development agencies leadership
♦ No dialogue with ♦ Submissive relations
beneficiaries with power structures
♦ Communication absent ♦ No sense of ownership
in the process ♦ No capacity to voice
♦ Knowledge arrogance community views

The story of a community dream
What the donor
How it was described in
thought the community
theWhat thedocument…
project consultant
wanted...
recommended…
How programme
The way it was designed
implementers installed
it…
in the community…
What the community
really wanted but was
not able to
communicate…


Paradigms (1950-2000)
♦ Based on Modernisation Theories (diffusion):
• Diffusion of innovations
• Social marketing
• Health promotion
• Edutainment (education & entertainment)
♦ Based on Dependency Theories (participation):
• Development communication
• Alternative, horizontal, dialogic
• Participatory communication
• Communication for social change

I. Modernisation theories
♦ “Deficit of information” causes poverty
♦ Traditional cultures, a barrier for
modernisation & development
♦ One model of development: copy
industrialised nations
♦ Selling the image of international co-
operation to developing countries
♦ Use the growth & expansion of
communications technologies: radio, TV


Diffusion of innovations
♦ “Poor lack of knowledge” - Knowledge viewed as
a exclusive privilege of the North
♦ Transfer of knowledge to change behaviour
♦ Adoption of western innovations & transfer of
media technology and models
♦ Western culture communication rationale:
awareness, interest, decision, trial, adoption +
boxes, arrows, flows charts
♦ Decision-making made elsewhere by donors &
funding agencies
♦ Intensive involvement of government media
(private media yet to arrive)

Social marketing
♦ Propaganda-based techniques from WWII &
commercial advertising models
♦ Advertising jargon: “clients”, “consumers”,
“Reduce distance between consumer & product”
♦ Military jargon: “targets”, “campaign”, “tactics”
♦ Influence of behavioural theories (Skinner)
♦ Intensive use of mass media & add agencies
♦ Superficial understanding of local context
♦ Lack of analysis of structural causes
♦ Biased self-promoting quantitative evaluations

Health promotion
♦ Established from health services perspective:
“the doctor knows better”
♦ Prescriptive approach: “must do this”
♦ Believes individual behaviour responsible for
health problems - blames the victim
♦ Promotes official public health policies
♦ Ignores political, cultural & social conditions
♦ Often lacks of communication expertise
♦ Doctors & nurses improvise tehmselves as
communicators


Education & entertainment
♦ “Edutainment”, an improved version
♦ More emphasis on educational process
♦ Mix of mass media & interpersonal communication:
“media is not the silver bullet” (Garth Japhet)
♦ Creativity: TV & radio dramas, songs, etc
♦ Direct link with health services
♦ Promote women & youth local organisations
♦ Criticism: How much education and how much
entertainment? – Long-term impact?


II. Dependency theories
♦ Growth of social & political movements in
Asia, Latin America, Africa (independence)
♦ Analysis of structural causes (political,
economic, social) of underdevelopment
♦ Oppose to neo-colonial strategies
♦ Builds alliances between workers, peasants,
intellectuals from North & South
♦ Social participation & organisation is key
♦ Criticism of media dependency & diffusion


Development communication
♦ Works with community & involves people
♦ Communication to promote rural participation
♦ Promoted by FAO in the 70’s
♦ Rural development & food security
♦ Specific analysis of local problems
♦ Attention to indigenous culture & identity
♦ Related to local organisations & co-operatives
♦ Training of change agents – “extension workers”
♦ Specificity vs. massive use of media
♦ Remained institutional & programme-linked model

Alternative, dialogic, horizontal
♦ Born from struggle against dictatorships
♦ Rejection of hegemonic mass media (MacBride)
♦ Interpersonal, horizontal & dialogic (Freire 60’s)
♦ Use of appropriate low-cost media tools
♦ Mushrooming of grassroots' experiences - radio
♦ Demystification of technology tools
♦ Appropriation of media tools & contents
♦ Development of critical sense towards media
♦ Criticism: isolated, small, no impact, no evaluation


Participatory communication
♦ Increased involvement of social & community
organisations
♦ Media & contents decided democratically within
the community
♦ Social empowerment, networking &
organisational objectives
♦ The communication process is more important
than the end products
♦ Ownership of media tools & processes


Communication for Social Change
♦ Concept articulated at RF seminar, April 1997
♦ Recovers lessons learned & participatory
experiences from developing countries
♦ Process of dialogue and debate, based on
tolerance, respect, equity, social justice & active
participation of all stakeholders
♦ Rejects hierarchic & mass media intensive models
of communication
♦ Aims community empowerment & local decision-
making process
♦ Strategic approach to development

Main differences
Hierarchic model Participatory model
♦ Behavioural causes ♦ Structural causes
♦ Vertical ♦ Horizontal
♦ Persuasion ♦ “Concientisation”
♦ Individual change ♦ Social change
♦ Passive & “banking” ♦ Active & critical
♦ Objects of change ♦ Agents of change
♦ Massive diffusion ♦ Dialogue & debate
♦ General assumptions ♦ Specific , diverse
♦ Short-term / messages ♦ Long-term / process

Diffusion model
A. Problem: lack of information & knowledge
B. Solution: knowledge - attitudes - practice
C. Conceptual framework: modernization through diffusion
of innovations
D. Definition of communication: information transfer –
vertical
E. Methods of communication: information dissemination –
mass media
F. Goal: outcome oriented – behaviour change
G. Types of interventions: Social Marketing, Edutainment
(entertainment-education)


Participatory model
A. Problem: structural inequalities
B. Solution: participation - community empowerment
C. Conceptual Framework: dependency, social mobilisation
D. Definition of communication: information exchange –
horizontal dialogue – respect knowledge & culture
E. Methods of development communication: grassroots
participation – community interaction
F. Goal: process oriented – social change
G. Types of interventions: Participatory Action Research
(PAR), Rapid Participatory Appraisal (RPA),
development, alternative, participatory, dialogic
communication

Horizontal Vs. Vertical
♦ People as dynamic ♦ People perceived as
communicators receivers of
participating in information and
social change, with instructions,
a critical approach decisions made by
to information others


Process Vs. Campaign
♦ People taking in ♦ Expensive and
hand their own unsustainable
future through campaigns which
democratic mobilise but do not
participation in build capacity at
communication the community
process level


Long-Term Vs. Short-Term
♦ Communication ♦ ‘Annual report’
and development, donor driven
as long-term projects that do not
processes that need acknowledge the
time to be assumed cultural realities
and appropriated by and often oversize
people results & outputs


Collective Vs. Individual
♦ Communities that ♦ People targeted
act & make individually,
decisions detached from their
collectively in the community and
interest of the
majority, avoiding from their
the risk of lending communal forms of
power to a few decision-making


With… Vs. For…
♦ Researching, ♦ Deciding,
designing, researching,
exchanging designing, pre-
messages with & by testing,
disseminating,
the community, in a evaluating messages
process of dialogue to or for…the
and debate community


Specific Vs. Massive
♦ Communication ♦ Using the same
process & messages umbrella media,
specifically adapted messages &
to each social group strategies in diverse
in terms of content, cultural contexts,
language & media and for different
social sectors


People needs Vs. Donor musts
♦ Community based ♦ Communication
research to identify, projects built on
define & donor needs:
differentiate the felt privatisation, birth
needs and the real control (family
needs planning), extensive
farming


Ownership Vs. Access
♦ Ownership of ♦ Access to
media and information
communication channels is a step
tools provides voice forward, though
and opportunity often controlled and
with no restriction regulated by others


Consciousness Vs. Persuasion
♦ A process of bring ♦ Persuasion to
up consciousness change behaviour
and deep and perform acts on
understanding of specific issues is
only sustainable
social reality, with permanent
problems, and stimulus & funds
solutions


CFSC – main principles
[1] Sustainability of social changes is certain
when individuals & communities affected
become owners of the communicational
process & contents
[2] CFSC, horizontal & participatory, aims to
strengthen community links and amplify the
voices of the poorest; based on the notion of
the appropriation of the communicational
process and the development of local
contents

CFSC – main principles …
[3] Communities should be the agents of their
own social change and master the
communication process
[4] Emphasis on promoting dialogue, debate &
negotiation, building alliances; rather than
persuasion, pure transfer of information &
external knowledge


[5] The CFSC process should go beyond
individual behaviours and take into
consideration social norms, current policies,
local culture & tradition, and the general
context of development
[6] Dialogue & participation are key to
strengthen cultural identity, trust,
commitment, ownership of ideas &
expressions, and community organisation

[7] CFSC rejects the linear model of
transmission of information from a central
sender towards a individual receiver, and
promotes a process of interactions where
knowledge is shared and collective action is
taken


Communication resources

D $ 1,000.000.000
media $ 1,000.000
organisations $ 1,000
$1
community

The up-side down pyramid


Communication resources

D
media

organisations

community

The pyramid


If community media is the
answer, what is the
question?

Alfred E. Opubor


A question of power
♦ Communication for Social Change
contributes to put the decision-making
about development in the hands of the
people
♦ It consolidates the capability of
communities to confront their own ideas
about development with planners
♦ Within the community itself it favours the
strengthening of democratic process


A question of identity
♦ Participatory communication contributes to
install cultural pride and self-esteem
♦ It reinforces the social tissue through the
strengthening of indigenous & local forms
of organisation
♦ It protects traditions and cultural values,
while being able to incorporate new
elements


It is through the evolution of our
own genuine culture that our
identity can be fully discovered.

Steve Biko


Essential conditions for CFSC
At the community level…
[1] Community participation & appropriation
[2] Language & cultural pertinence
[3] Development of local contents
[4] Use of appropriate technology
[5] Networking & convergence


New discourse of development
♦ Acknowledging failures
♦ Rejecting top-down approaches
♦ Promoting participatory planning &
monitoring
♦ Community involvement & ownership
♦ Sustainable development
♦ Acknowledging role of communication for
social change & development

Demand & Supply
♦ Development organisations slowly moving
towards new paradigm
♦ Gap between demand & supply
♦ No qualified communication strategists to deal
with planners & experts
♦ Lack of comprehensive long-term vision
♦ Improvising short term training for staff at project
level – many “doers”, few thinkers
♦ Universities not providing the needed human
resources: changing names but same curricula


Anybody out there?
♦ Many professionals claim to subscribe to
communication for social change, even social
marketing defenders
♦ Communication Initiative lists hundreds
specialists from Europe & North America
♦ However, at programme & project level, difficult
to find development & social change
communication strategists, only journalists
♦ Development agencies improvising
communicators from any other discipline & field
of experience


The ivory tower
♦ Academic world has often turn its back to
development issues
♦ Journalists are trained by thousands, not
communicators – media bias
♦ Training based on alien models & theories
♦ Satisfying demands of artificial markets
♦ Ignorance about our own thinking
♦ New curricula are needed


The New Communicator
♦ Theoretical & practical balance
♦ Direct experience in development
♦ Knowledge of communication practices
♦ Strategic, long term thinking
♦ Understanding technology is just a tool
♦ Flexibility in the alternative use of media
♦ Role of amplifying the voices of voiceless
♦ Work rooted in cultural identity & dialogue


Thank you


Communication for Social Change
Consortium
http://www.communicationforsocialchange.org
……..
Making Waves: Participatory Communication
for Social Change

http://www.communicationforsocialchange.org/pdf/making_waves.pdf


The Communication Initiative

www.comminit.com


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