Managing Communication for Development

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I would like to discuss four areas and a footnote where management can, should and in some cases is being exercised in communication for development. When I speak of management, I use the term to mean sets of activities where people and resources are organized and impacts measured to achieve results around identified objectives.

Area 1:Structure of Communication

This is an area of development communication that often is overlooked, left implicit, or delegated to other disciplines. It includes ownership, financing, laws and regulations, and levels and types of competition affecting the different types of communication media in a society. The structure of communication is the foundation upon which rests much of our work in development communication. Without a strong foundation, many communication processes simply will not work. The best content and most well researched and designed messages are useless without access to and participation in media channels. If funding is not available, or if a monopoly squashes the ability to work with local media, development communication will fail.

Latin America, for example, has a strong history of innovation and debate on the structure of communication media concerning community radio, public service media, and local media. In the United States, the structure of communication has been the subject of much recent debate in the FCC around the recent ruling affecting monopoly and cross ownership of the mass media. The structure and regulations of community radio are beginning to attract the attention of regulators and activists throughout the world. In other areas, however, the structure of communication has not been a focus of attention in the area of development communication. As mangers of development communication, this area demands attention and a different set of skills for our profession, including lawyers, economists, and political scientists.

Area 2:Participation in Communication

Participation in communication includes levels of access, diversity, and dialogue present in communication channels and processes. In the most basic sense, it concerns power, politics and ideology. It addresses questions such as which group or individual has dominant representation in the media and which group or individual can speak out without fear. The importance of this aspect of development communication is highlighted in the work now taking place in rebuilding media in Afghanistan and Iraq as it was earlier in Eastern Europe or under the Latin American military dictatorships in the 1970s. Management for this area is not the usual business of development communicators but of political scientists or politicians. Development communication, if it focuses at all on this aspect at all usually focuses on communication processes at the community level. In the larger sense, however, development communication, in order to be effective, needs to have a grasp of the distribution of political power and participation in a society as it effects communication. This area calls out for a new set of indicators or variables for evaluation that focus on the group - not the individual - to measure the levels and values of diversity and of dialogue. Just as the underlying structures of the media must become part of the equation for making development communication work, the underlying power relations and ideologies of a society must be factored in a development communication plan. To do this as a discipline we need to continue to develop new tools and measures.

Area 3:Content of Communication for Development

Most communication for development programs start here, railing against unsafe sexual behaviors that can cause HIV/AIDS, discouraging tobacco use, raising awareness of SARS, de-stigmatizing certain groups, campaigning against violence. This is an area where traditionally we are best. The focus, however, sometimes is mainly on the message, ignoring the context. Here the management challenge of communication for development is to guarantee that the content fits the context in the wider sense of audience, but also of structure and participation. A finely crafted message on decreasing sexual partners in useless in a world where young women have no access to the media, or, even worse, have no power over their partners.

Area 4:Impact of Communication for Development

Historically development communication has gotten away with less rigorous measures of impact than other areas of investment in development. In part this is because it is difficult to measure the impact of communication. It often is hard to find a control group that has not been exposed to the message. It is even harder to control for the fact that people self select to see or listen to channels of communications - development communication does not occur in a laboratory, or even in a more controlled classroom setting. The development communication field often tests theories when it thinks it is testing impact, or relies on qualitative measures at the expense of harder evidence. Mostly, we fail to ask the right questions, or ask them over a long enough period of time.

Apparent past success in development communication - the green revolution, family planning - have given the field a green light to continue to apply past formulas uncritically to other areas such as HIV/AIDS without holding these formulas to very high standards of evidence on impact.

Evidence from several major studies is beginning to become available showing that our old assumptions about what works are wrong. One example of this is the recent report on the congressionally funded National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a five year approximately $1 billion effort, the largest public health communication program ever funded. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Congress allocated $35 million to undertake a careful, independently executed, evaluation of the Campaign. Through the fourth semi-annual evaluation, the result of the campaign are not positive, indeed there is a suggestion of a negative effect of the campaign. As managers, we need to ask the right questions and use the correct methodologies. We also need to require independent evaluations that uphold the most rigorous scientific standards.

Footnote:Technology - managing the technology

As managers of communication for development, we hear a lot about new information technologies. I put this here as a footnote, partly because I do not think it should ever be our starting point. We do not start with a technology and try to fit it to a development application. Those of us who lived through the heady days of educational television, satellite delivered message to farmers, and distance learning to build math and reading skills to lower income children in Central America have learned that the technology will not sustain the effort and will disappear as soon as external funding or donated equipment gives out. Development communication starts with structure, participation and content and then finds the right technologies, or technologies. Technology is not the not the beginning and not the end, it is a tool. As an old friend taught me many years ago, you cannot blame the airplane for not getting you there on time.

Contact:

Elizabeth Fox

efox@usaid.gov