Communicating Research for Influence: Strategies and Challenges for Bringing about Change

"...the more researchers are aware of communications processes, the greater the chances of their research being noticed, having an impact, and influencing important discussions."

Published by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), this manual incorporates APC's experiences and challenges in communicating research for influence - especially looking at research that has been done in the information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) sector. Contents include:

• Introduction
• Getting the advocacy message right from the start
• Disseminate by design
• Working with partners
• The network effect
• Telling a story
• Mapping audiences
• Working with a communications team
• Sustaining influence
• Budgeting for communicating research for advocacy
• Some conclusions
• Appendix

Key points include:

• "Know why you want to communicate something before you communicate it. Think about creating a distinct research identity based on what you want to communicate.
• Consider the organisations you want to work with - what sort of interest in research they have. Some may not be interested in research as a process, but they may be good at advocating for change based on the research outcomes.
• In contexts where the skills and capacity of research partners differ, create participatory decision-making processes from the start in order to maximise buy-in.
• Map communications channels and their limitations, as well as the types of content that will work in specific contexts. Research outputs need to be tailored to the specific country contexts, as well as the kinds of technologies your target audience uses.
• Consider a story-led approach. They create rich resources of advocacy material. These can then be mined later to maximise the advocacy potential of research.
• Creating local multi-stakeholder forums increase the likelihood of your research being taken up. Consider forming a network around your research in order to create cycles of influence and change as your research progresses. These networks can also feed into the research process, and build on what you are learning.
• Outputs are communication processes, not events. The hard work is going back to what you recommend or say through research, and learning as an organisation from that process.
• While a communications strategy can be planned ahead of the research, it is important to be flexible during the research process, and to constantly review the likely effectiveness of the outputs as the research unfolds. Sometimes the kinds of data or research that you anticipated at the start of the project is not possible - due to capacity and skills of the researchers, or bureaucratic and political bottlenecks that prevent research from being conducted properly.
• Outputs should be geared towards being useful to participating organisations. Before developing outputs, think about who they are aimed at. For academics, a book publication might be more appropriate. For activists, factsheets, summaries or interviews that capture the key findings of the research.
• Where possible, build in a small advocacy budget or catalysing fund. This should be incorporated into the budget to help organisations take up the issues independently of the primary researchers or coordinating organisations.
• Involve the communications team in your research right from the start. They should be able to influence the research design based on their knowledge of audiences.
• Always budget for time for dissemination activities, for planning, for production and for learning.

Doing these will go some way towards helping your research have influence. But there is another aspect that is equally important: the legitimacy of your message. As this publication has suggested, this legitimacy is closely interlinked with self-learning, with 'hearing' and with change in the organisations that are doing the research themselves.

Research outputs are not just 'outputs' - they are communicative actions and processes. They are as much an opportunity for the organisation doing the research to listen and learn, as they are opportunities to reach a target audience, who in turn work as dissemination champions. The feedback they give on a project impacts on its framework and assumptions. This aspect of dissemination is often lost - dissemination is about feedback in the most basic and intrinsic sense..."

Click here for the 47-page report in English in PDF format.
Click here for the 50-page report in Spanish in PDF format.
Click here for the 51-page report in French in PDF format.