Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development

This study, part of a process of providing background research in support of the First World Congress on Communication for Development (held in October 2006 in Rome, Italy), is a survey of empirical research on communication for development based on a sample of peer-reviewed English-language articles from academic journals published between 2000 - 2005. The purpose of the analysis is to collect evidence from academic research to highlight the impacts of communication on development initiatives and to present current trends in theoretical underpinnings and communication approaches. As outlined in the document's introduction, communication has the potential to make development programmes, including those related to furthering the Millennium Development Goals, more effective by:

• making interventions more vernacular and specific to local contexts.
• making interventions more scalable, using communication techniques and devices that address varying spatial requirements for local, regional, national, and international levels.
• making links between economically, politically, and culturally disconnected groups and ideas.
• empowering people through enabling dialogue, raising awareness, and fostering self-reflection - in particular, giving voice to marginalised and disenfranchised populations.

This paper intends to present evidence from academia of these effects through an overview of key theoretical models, patterns of evidence in recent empirical studies, some of the outstanding evidence of the impacts of communication for development, some weak spots in the evidence, and theoretical, methodological, and empirical gaps where further research might be directed.

The document reviews the evolutions of theory beginning with the post World War II modernisation paradigm, which posited that exposure through mass media to new ideas beyond one's local conditions, traditions, and beliefs would catalyse change. Through mass media messaging, people receive top-down information in a one-way dissemination of persuasive messages, often about innovation, from development specialists focusing on large populations. Next, the diffusion model attempted to combine the mass media ability to create wide-spread knowledge of innovations with a theoretical shift toward interpersonal communication mechanisms, within families, neighbourhoods, and villages, as local contexts from which to design intervention strategies. The 1970's brought a collective paradigmatic shift now recognised as the participatory approach, based on, among many theoretical approaches: Liberation Pedagogy, Putting the Last First, Dialogue Paradigm, Multiplicity Paradigm, etc.

Participation, which has received consensus support as the preferred communication strategy, according to this document, from a number of organisations - including the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Bank (WB) - is based on participation of the intended project beneficiaries at some point in the project cycle via horizontal dialogue cultivated through mutual understanding at the local level. Used pragmatically, participatory communication can be a strategic tool to achieve a pre-established goal, like condom use, but it can also be a channel for facilitated self-organisation and self-management for self-development. Rather than focusing on outcomes, development specialists can take on the role of drawing on communication to facilitate local action using local knowledge.

As author Nobuya Inagaki argues, the participatory approach has the possibility of being more inclusive of marginalised voices and of providing a venue to address structural problems, like gender inequality, along with immediate issues, such as unprotected sex. However, issues of the locus of power, particularly related to expectations of funding sources, and the degree and nature of what constitutes participation, along with the cultural and political complexities of local empowerment, are challenges and complexities in the use of this approach.

In laying a grounding for examining research trends, the document clarifies the current state of communication for development as characterised by the co-presence of multiple frameworks, here characterised as modernisation, diffusion, and participation, with signs that there is interest in the cross-pollination of theories and strategies to address communication processes more holistically. The document reviews 8 empirical studies that fall into the modernisation category, 7 studies of projects using diffusion, 12 using participation, and categorised as "other", including mixed approaches.

Relevant to communication strategies, among the 8 using didactic mass media messaging espoused by the modernisation theory, were findings on what made the projects more effective. For example, a Tanzanian project - marketing treated mosquito nets as malaria prevention - first studied its audience and realised that febrile illnesses were not linked to mosquitoes in the minds of their audience. This critically influenced the design and implementation of the communication method. Other studies of modernisation-style projects found that different ethnic and gender groups acquired knowledge in varying degrees and from multiple sources (from studies of HIV/AIDS message recipients),indicating the potential value of coupling various modes of communication to establish a network of communication channels. Another study found that audiences can develop a parasocial interaction by identification with soap opera characters, which, in this project, stimulated horizontal discussion in collective listening groups. These examples hint at more fluid communication processes among audiences, who benefit from secondary and tertiary communication cycles, possibly strategically stimulated by follow-up based on other paradigms, following the mass media campaigns.

The 7 studies of the diffusion model focused on interpersonal communications channels for delivery or "retransmission" of didactic messages. However, participatory methods were cited within the diffusion studies as supporting message transmission, despite not playing a part in message formation. Local recruiting of community mobilisers, involvement of local organisations in message diffusion, and sharing of baseline research with communities were participatory overlays in these diffusion models. As Inagaki notes, these studies typically compared impacts of interpersonal communication with impacts of other modes of communication.

Generally, in the 12 studies reviewed, research on participation was categorised as participation in: decision making, implementation, evaluation, or receiving benefit. Projects studied used varying combinations of those categories of participation; however, degrees of participation are rarely reported in empirical research or systematically evaluated. In addition, projects differ as to whether participation itself means involvement in reaching a goal, or whether participation is the goal. Among the challenges to participation, several studies found a challenge in power balance, one recognising the marginalisation of a particular group of participants, another finding that academics, social or political elites, and formal agencies overwhelmed the more marginalised voices, resulting in varying degrees of a sense of project ownership and agency among participants. Further, an institutional context interfered with participation in a youth-centred project that was detrimentally located within a school setting.

Of the research reviewed, the document states that most projects showed a bias towards one of the three theoretical models, though several demonstrated some integration of theories. The participatory projects tended to focus on building mutual understanding and non-hierarchical relations between stakeholders. The diffusion projects attempted to change the beneficiary population's behaviours through compound effects of mass media messaging and interpersonal communication. The modernisation model projects tended to effect behaviour change through vertical message transmission.

Of nine classifications of approaches and techniques, interpersonal communications was the most frequently found in the projects surveyed, commonly used in both diffusion theory and participation. Education entertainment ("edutainment") and social marketing were next in frequency of use and are more commonly used in diffusion and modernisation message dissemination. The use of group communication was almost exclusively the territory of the participatory approach in the studies reviewed here because it is a forum for horizontal communication exchange, debate, and consideration of locally-authored solutions.

Evidence of the impacts of communication for development are discussed according to types of outcomes, including:

1. Behaviour change - Straightforward assessments showing results of communication interventions are found to be frequent in the studies, as reported here. A sampling of evidence includes: a) increased condom usage resulting from repeated exposure to messages; b) increased insecticide-treated net usage; c) increased HIV prevention practices, resulting from various education and education entertainment/social marketing and social networking interventions; and d) increased contraception use found to statistically mirror the frequency of peer or spousal conversations on radio soap opera content, exemplifying diffusion of messages through interpersonal channels.
2. Change in knowledge and attitudes - These changes are sometimes related to behaviour change, implying a logical and sequential relationship between acquisition of knowledge and behaviour change. Evidence of knowledge acquisition changes occurred in farmer field school (FFS) Andean potato farmers who used participatory activities for acquisition of analytical skills, critical thinking, etc., which encouraged independent judgement on farming practices. Similarly, local expertise, including indigenous and agrarian knowledge, was incorporated into the construction of a health communication model and into a geographical information system (GIS) project for rural water management.
3. Empowerment and capacity building - Evidence of empowerment includes a study of the effects of discussion-provoking radio soap operas which shows a shift in decisionmaking on contraceptive use - linked to these discussions - from husbands acting alone to husband - wife collaboration. Tangible outcomes of a 30 percent drop in neonatal mortality and an 80 percent drop in maternal mortality resulted from horizontal, deliberative communication among Nepalese village women and facilitators to devise bottom-up solutions to perinatal health issues. Multiple results of the numerous communication strategies of the Soul City entertainment education initiative in South Africa include legislation on domestic violence, increased usage of a help hotline, and collective actions against economic exploitation. Despite the potential of such strategies to empower people, there is - according to the author - a need for critical investigation. For example, a radio call for smaller family size inadvertently led to an increase in selective abortion (of girls), perpetuating male dominance in the social system.
4. Coalition building and partnership - This more recent focus, a change from the traditional donation of financial and technical resources, is exemplified by a joint forestry management project, which resulted in 50 percent of farmers planting trees after participating in workshops and forming a joint steering committee. Elsewhere, positive outcomes of pro-economically poor coalition building were limited by political elites, suggesting a need for wider structural or institutional reform accompanying these kinds of interventions. The document also details a study which enumerates challenges of balancing stakeholder power and participation in a healthcare partnership project.
5. Resource development - These studies examined communication interventions and the creation of tangible resources. A study of a soil management project found that soil improvements were not successfully achieved, though the project raised awareness through participatory soil mapping, which led to policy-level discussions. The previously mentioned study of Nepal perinatal preparation resulted in community generated emergency funds, child delivery kits, stretcher schemes, a locally-made film, and home visits to pregnant women. A cautionary study found that a GIS mapping scheme prevented residents from reclaiming land from which they were removed in the Apartheid era of South Africa, pointing to the need for views and voices of intended beneficiaries to be represented in generating resources.

Of the 37 development communications projects studied, more than half used more than one method of communication, which were not easily empirically assessed. However, three lessons are drawn from examining them:

• Communication techniques are not neutral - some techniques and channels serve some purposes better than others.
• General categories (mass media, interpersonal communication, etc.) can potentially conceal crosspollination effects.
• Different communication channels interact with one another to form more complex networks which may achieve greater impacts.
  

The document concludes that the empirical research on the impact of communication on development is scant, in part due to the lack of clarity on communicating what these impacts might be. Also, as stated here, there is a need for research examining these impacts of communication in the context of critical social theories on the structural dynamics of international power and its effect on development, in order to move beyond the paternalistic modernisation paradigm and allow the more practical and evaluative research results to be seen within the larger issues of inequality, exploitation, structural poverty, etc. Further, the field of development communications research needs to address the gaps among the methodological paradigms presented, including showing evidence of failure as well as success, and studying long-term effects of communication through empirical research using objective researchers not associated with projects being examined. Increasing the volume of research on communication for development - especially resolving divisions between quantatiative and qualitative methodologies - and communicating the impact-based results in publications which traverse disciplines can support intersectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations. Finally, the document suggests that, while affluence and technological advances have not automatically alleviated the human sufferings of underdevelopment, some of the evidence shows that communication is "one of the few remaining resources - both viable and universal - that can be mobilized by, and for, disadvantaged people and communities in developing countries."

Paper copies of this document, at a cost of US$15, may be ordered from World Bank Publications.