 |  |
| |
This Case Study forms part of a series which the Development Support Communication Branch, of FAO's Information Division, is preparing. It will be used as background material for an Expert Consultation on Development Communication which FAO plans to hold in June 1987, as well as for general information and briefing on communication activities in the field which seem to be of special interest and potential value to rural development and communication specialists.
We express our gratitude to Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of Grameen Bank, for allowing us to study the Bank's work and for the encouragement and practical support we enjoyed from him and his many colleagues.
Any errors or misrepresentations are our responsibility. The opinions expressed are also ours and do not necessarily reflect those of FAO or the Grameen Bank.
Boroya, Norway
Andreas Fugelsang
Dale Chandler
Poor people know what they must do to get out of the rut.
But the people who make decisions refuse to put faith
in their ability. Muhammad Yunus
Communication has been around for a long time as a paradigm in development theory, although some experts, advisers or field workers are still in the process of discovering it as a practical issue. It is now possible to think of communication in terms of the contemporary history of development policies and to trace some of the main features in its evolution. Sometimes it is fruitful to look back in order to find a new bearing forward.
In the 1960s, development meant a process of modernisation modeled on the industrialised societies of the North. The measure of progress in this direction was economic growth. Industrialization and cash crop agriculture were the means to achieve it. Programmes and projects were shaped as interventions in the economic and social structures of the South which, in themselves, were considered inimical to development. In this period, the paramount paradigm was knowledge transfer and rural people were considered ignorant, conservative, even intransigent. At the same time, the industries producing mass-media and educational technology increasingly looked to the South to find markets for their products. The myth of the power of the mass media to transfer knowledge arose. Social sciences sustained the myth by turning their attention to media and communication research. The notions were that technology would replace the teacher. The passing of traditional society was inevitable. The issue was diffusion of lnnovations. (Lerner 1958 and 1967, Pye 1963, Rodgers 1967, Schramm 1964) The idea of the opinion leader in social theory was brushed up and renamed the progressive farmer. (Lazars-feldt and Katz, 1955) Converted into an agricultural extension strategy, with the richer farmers as a target, it was considered a potential breakthrough in the diffusion of knowledge to trigger rural development e
As time passed, however, evidence accumulated which indicated that more complex socio-economic forces were at work. While the progressive farmers became richer, the presumed adopters remained poor and the gap between them widened. (Coulson, 1977). Irrigation schemes, farmers' cooperatives, rural credit banks or new industries--a mounting number of evaluation reports revealed that centrally planned interventions ultimately did not benefit the intended beneficiaries, the poorest. Population growth became a matter of grave concern. Income-distribution appeared as an issue in the discussions of economic growth. The basic needs approach, first introduced by ILO, received increased attention. The least developed countries (LDCs) were identified and listed. The quality-of-life aspects of development came to the fore embodied in programmes for improvement of nutritional status, maternal and child health care and later primary health care.
The idea that we should be involved in a two-way process was beginning to emerge. Communication became the new angle of looking at social development. Universities converted their departments of creative writing, journalism, film making, radio or mass media into schools of communication. The audience was telescoped and audience research became the focus. Out of this grew the notion that the audience was not just a mass of individuals, but structured in groups. Attitudinal and behavioural changes were not attributed solely to the medium, but to reinforcements within such groups as a consequence of exposure to the medium. Group animation became the new methodology in extension and communication activities. The concept of Radio Farm Forums evolved from experiences in agricultural extension work in Canada and later was sponsored by FAO in countries in Asia and Africa. Eventually, the opinion leader theory was replaced by network analysis. It was realized that information does not flow from top down. On the contrary, it flows horizontally between equals in networks of shared interests. (Cerha, 1967) Although interventionist economic development policies continued unabatedly, there was a growing understanding that people living on the margin of society had opinions about development that should be taken seriously. Expressed needs should be solicited and considered.
Early in the 1970s, UNDP launched the concept of project support communication (PSC). Agencies such as FAO and UNICEF followed suit and -established in time development support communication branches or units. The intention was that operational communication components should be worked into programme and project documents and budgets. Yet, it soon became evident that the funding made available was not commensurate with the verbal commitments. In the initial stages of these programmes, too heavy an emphasis was placed on providing communication equipment and producing films and other educational materials without understanding their impact. Awareness increased that oral cultures developed special perceptual and conceptual skills in people and that transition to a written culture required training in other such skills. (Fuglesang, 1973) During the same period, conscientization was introduced as the essence in a process of communication with the poor. (Freire, 1970) It was based on the idea that the poor were unable to conceptualise and express their real needs. The poor could not be empowered unless they underwent an educational process, the methodology of which was prescribed.
The notion of conscientization was a leap forward in the social insight of most educationists and communication professionals. In particular, it became the basis for the Latin American approach to popular education which also integrated the use of mass or group media in the process. Despite reservations and criticism, the Radiophonic Schools in Colombia were startling achievements in communication. (Beltran, 1975) Similarly, interesting experiences were made with the use of interactive video in Chile and Peru (Fraser, 1981) spearheaded by FAO support.
As it became apparent that technological media had been overestimated, the attention was turned to the potential for utilizing indigenous or traditional media to involve people in the process of development. Folk media such as theatre troupes or town criers, for example, were used in family planning campaigns. Traditional institutions, communication channels and decision-making practices were scrutinised with this purpose in mind. (Kidd and Coletta, 1980) The potential for manipulation was hotly debated and the simmering notions of the dignity and human rights of indigenous peoples surfaced as powerful issues. The process of vulgarisation that flowed from mass-media dominated by the North was realized by concerned individuals. The idea that the world needed and should treasure its rich cultural diversity rather than-succumbing to the onslaught of a mono-culture bred by the media was gaining recognition.
In the beginning of the 1980s, there were signs that communication was being perceived as an interaction between two or more cultural partners of equal stature. And the notion of inter-cultural or cross-cultural communication appeared. The governing idea was that communication was a mutual learning process from which each cultural partner could derive knowledge valuable for its own development. (Fuglesang, 1982) Parallel with this were signs of an appreciation of indigenous knowledge systems. For example, research revealed that traditional subsistence farmers in many cases had known better than the agricultural experts what cultivation methods were appropriate in their own environment. (Brokensha, et al., 1980) The myth of people's ignorance, created unwittingly perhaps by Northern scientists, educationists and communicators in unison, was and still is, in the process of being dispelled. (Fuglesang, 1984)
The Northern ideas of knowledge transfer and communication spring from the assumed power of mass media and educational technology. It is further fuelled by the frustrations of those who assume they are more knowledgeable than others. The concept of crosscultural communication in the context of the competence, validity and legitimacy of all lifestyles and cultures has led more recently to the idea of participatory communication. Already, this concept is gravitating towards the much larger issue of community participation. For example, social analysis and conscientization facilitated through popular theatre approaches recognise that communication is participatory action. A mounting number of convincing cases of community action for development in Latin America, Asia and Africa have been described. (Boar, 1979; Bappa, 1981; Kidd, 1982)
The issue of community participation should not be regarded as a result of the drive for communication only. Historically, it has evolved along a parallel but converging path starting with Saul Minsky's trail blazing work as a community organiser in the ghettos of black and other minorities in the United States after the second World War. (Alinsky 1969) His efforts coincided later with the social unrest in the 1960s which found an analysis in social philosophers such as Habermas, Mattelart, Chomsky and Gunder Frank.
While Freire's process-oriented theory inspired the work for people empowerment in Latin America, Minsky's more confrontational method made its imprint on community
participation activities in India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries. His credo was organising through conflict with the oppressive forces. At this time, the scene is characterised by a change in the use of technologies and methods. Regarded earlier as instruments of communication, now they were seen as ways to facilitate participatory processes in the community. Case studies and examples of community-controlled radio stations, popular theatre, interpersonal facilitation and community animation, community-controlled use of video interaction, even community produced slide series are well documented. (Fuglesang and Chandler, 1985)
This short outline of the evolution of the concept of communication in development can hardly be more than impressionistic. Any attempt to write history always raises the question of whose history it is. Our hope is that this outline at least demonstrates how professional perceptions and opinions change over time. Professional thinking is largely controlled by powerful concepts and verbal images which subsequent experience so often proves to be misguided. However, the benefit of hindsight should not lead us to the mistaken view that our predecessors erred and that we know better. More than ever it is important that communication practitioners demonstrate a capacity to question their own assumptions. More often than not, it is by querying the self-evident that we find new and better directions.
Very early the advocates of mass communication claimed that their media had an exceptional power to change human behaviour. This contention was subjected to scrutiny by many researchers who suspected it might be otherwise. In fact the myth was debunked decades ago. (Klapper, 1960) Klapper formulated several generalisations on the effects of mass media which still stand. Initially, he investigated more than 1000 research reports, studies and essays on mass communications. He used 270 of these as a basis for his formulations, maintaining that the main tendency of the research findings is as follows:
"Mass-media ordinarily does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effect, but rather functions among and through a nexus of mediating factors and influences."
"These mediating factors are such that they typically render mass-communication a contributory agent, but not the sole cause, in a process of reinforcing the existing conditions."
On this basis, Klapper goes on to describe the main mediating factors which he considers responsible for the functions and effects of mass communications.
Selective exposure is people's predisposition to expose themselves to those mass communications which are in accord with their attitudes and interests. Selective perception and retention are people's predisposition to dispose the meaning of mass communication messages in order to bring these messages into accord with their already existing views. The fact that people interact as members in social groups usually increases the reinforcing effect of the factors mentioned above. The group sees to it that the individual member does not deviate from its norm of behaviour. This group pressure reduces the effect of mass communication to a sort of accompaniment. The group context causes the individual member to be confronted by certain messages, but not by others, and also causes him or her to interpret the former in a group conformant way.
The fact that people communicate with each other, influences their behaviour in many matters more than mass communication and, moreover, it influences them in favour of constancy and reinforcement. An additional factor is that person to person communication is more effective than communication through various types of mass-media. It should be borne in mind that Klapper does not pretend that his generalisations are absolutely valid. He considers them to be formulations of predispositions; of tendencies likely to occur or usually occurring. His material is also taken from industrial societies. It remains to be researched to what extent the generalisations are relevant for audiences in countries of the South.
Klapper's notions of selective exposure and selective perception were deepened by other researchers, notably in Sweden. (Cerha, 1967) In a mammoth sample of 50,000 adults, Cerha found that shared interests are the channels through which communication flows. People's interests control the flow of information in society. People communicate when they share an interest in a given topic. Furthermore, Cerha points to the importance of the limitations of the human brain to process information. With a capacity to store and handle only 5000 words our brain is simply inadequate to cope with the enormously differentiated information complexity of the world. The only mechanism our brain has to solve this problem is selective perception. The implication of this is that the individual becomes specialized, selecting a few topics according to his or her interests, and concentrating on these through the available information source-be it a mass medium such as a newspaper or in personal conversation. In a sense, it is ironic that it takes a mammoth study to assess what any alert person in a party or an informal meeting can observe: people quickly sort themselves out in couples or groups conversing about topics of mutual interest. In other words, people's shared interest are topical. In Sweden, topical interests include cooking, music, art or outdoor life. They may range from more mundane topics such as petrol or cigarettes or more sophisticated ones such as religion, human rights or thermodynamics. In a different culture, topical interests would be different but several would be the same. As a rule, the general topics in a society would activate the interest of many, while special topics would activate the interest of few. Expanding on Klapper, Cerha arrived at the following conclusions:
-With increasing topical interest, there is increasing exposure to topical information, but not to information in general. In other words, a man who was very interested in outdoor life would expose himself selectively and extensively to sources giving information on that topic, such as outdoor magazines, newspaper items on camping, television programmes featuring outdoor life and, of course, those people interested in outdoor life.
-The study confirms that increased exposure is relatively independent of the type of medium. Exposure to personal as well as to mass communication increases with increasing interest. Therefore, there is little basis for claiming particular persuasive powers for the mass media.
-Both the advising and the seeking activity of a person increase with increasing interest in a topic. We are not justified then in considering the individual as a passive recipient of messages, The individual is an information processing unit in an active give-and-take interaction with his or her information environment. This point explains the notion of shared interests.
What clearly emerges from these conclusions is that shared interests are the cohesive force in social networks or larger social formations and can explain the evolution of such formations. Whatever human beings endeavour to do with their societies, they can succeed in doing so only through sharing. Sharing of interests, however, cannot be superimposed. It will emerge only from an open, free and unimpeded information flow in society. Shared interests highlight the strength of homogenous and egalitarian corporate groups and expose the weakness of hierarchical formations. Ultimately, the ideal sharing of interests is expressed by the achievement of a social consensus, state of mutual trust.
Intuitively, we recognise there is a close connection between the concepts of topical and shared interests and the more colloquial notions of credibility and trust. Credibility has been studied occasionally by communication researchers. It should be no surprise to us that the effectiveness of a medium or a communicator hinges on their credibility in the eyes of the audience. While researchers and practitioners for decades have been preoccupied with ascertaining the effectiveness of media, it has escaped us that human beings indeed do not communicate through media technology but through trust. Communication succeeds only through a gained trust of people and a genuine trust in people. Trust becomes the decisive factor in communication, as it is in the issue of community participation and social transformation. Adult educators or communication practitioners have never been particularly interested in trust. Yet, it may be more important to know about trust, than to know about educational standards, pedagogical methods, media technology or communication benchmarks. There may be need for a wider perception of what communication is, and what it is not. We may start by asking more pertinent questions such as: What kinds of social environments are conducive to producing trust in people? How do we go about creating such social environments? What are the important means of communication in creating them? In the following we shall describe and analyze a development initiative which may show us some directions that respond to these questions.
| |