Closing the Information Loop in Haiti: Responding to Information Needs from Crisis Response to Recovery to Development

"Information matters, especially for individuals affected by severe crises like the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. But critically, new research shows that listening to audiences may be just as important."

This review of Internews' humanitarian information radio programme, launched in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, argues that information provision should be a core component of any humanitarian assistance or development programme. To be effective, the communications programme must rely on continual research to identify the information needs of those affected by conflict or disasters, then employ the findings from that research in the selection and production of media programming.

The paper argues that determining what information to provide shouldn't be a top-down process determined by aid agencies or media organisations. Rather, audience research provides an important mechanism for understanding information needs during times of crises. In designing its daily humanitarian information radio programme Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen (ENDK News You Can Use), Internews used research as a fundamental part of a broader media project.

As Internews' research shows, in Haiti, radio is a cost-effective, ubiquitous, and credible news source. ENDK, produced locally by Haitian journalists with support from Internews, reported directly on concerns that Haitians identified as most important to them in the year after the earthquake, a year that included a destructive hurricane, a cholera epidemic, and election violence.

Findings from the audience research show that:

• ENDK provides important humanitarian information through the radio. In that sense, ENDK has "closed the loop" on assistance provision by connecting it directly to the information needs of people living throughout Haiti, especially in the areas hardest hit by the earthquake. ENDK discovers the population's needs through focus groups and continuous audience surveys, using the findings to guide its story selection and reporting. Over the period examined in this report, March 2010 to March 2011, Internews surveyed nearly 16,000 Haitians and conducted two sets of focus group studies with 488 others. At the time of this report's publication, the research team surveys Haitians in communities throughout the most seriously damaged parts of the country to learn what new information needs its audience has identified, often as a result of an earlier round of research-based reporting. ENDK shares its research findings with other aid providers, who have reported using it to improve the effectiveness of their own projects.
• It is important to create two-way information flows in which those in need of assistance directly and explicitly explain their information priorities to aid providers. For example, contrary to the researchers' expectations, men and women do not have substantially different priorities in their information needs. Also, people's information needs did not vary depending on the state of their homes following the earthquake. Furthermore, information needs did not change radically over time, even within a changing emergency response and recovery context and where the population's information needs appeared to be met. This is why "outside aid groups cannot and should not presume to know what a population's information needs will be following a crisis of any type. The only way to truly discover those needs is to ask."
• Research-based, two-way communication should be an integral component of all development programmes, not just post-disaster humanitarian assistance programmes, and it should be built into a project from the start. This type of communication builds resilience, allowing societies to more successfully respond to crises when they arise. Creating this capacity will require investing in the training of researchers and communications experts. More field research is needed to establish best practices and to discover how best to use research-driven reporting to reach and engage citizens, community groups, and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

"[W]hile the ENKD program was designed around radio for reasons particular to Haiti, we urge aid providers to make use of other media as appropriate, particularly mobile telephony and social media. But the key to effective assistance, we argue, is practical, directed, professional research. To serve any population honestly, credibly and effectively, humanitarian assistance providers must first learn what its needs are. They have to ask, earnestly and continuously."