The Drum Beat 371 - Without Communication, There Is No Development

The first World Congress on Communication for Development was held by The World Bank, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and The Communication Initiative in Rome, Italy, October 25-27 2006. Its purpose was to demonstrate that communication for development is an essential approach for responding to the most urgent challenges of development, and to suggest that, therefore, it should be more fully integrated into the practice and the politics of development. Discussions and presentations focused on what works, what doesn't, and how communication for development contributes to better development.

Looking to carry to Rome some joint positions and common ideas, various sectoral and regional discussions were organised in Latin America, including: the First Regional Workshop on Communication for the Development and Ways of Sustainable Life, May 28 - June 1 2006 in Costa Rica; the seminar "Without Communication, There Is No Development", August 25-27 2006 in Lima, Peru; and the International Meeting of Communication and Development of Pueblos Indígenas, September 13-15 2006, in Santacruz, Bolivia. These events were organised with the support of the FAO and Asociación de Comunicadores Sociales Calandria, both partners of The Communication Initiative.

In Son de Tambora No. 152, published by La Iniciativa de Comunicación October 18 2006 Rosa María Alfaro, founder of Calandria, and founder and Executive Secretary of the Veeduría Ciudadana de la Comunicación Social, shares the document that was written as a conclusion to the seminar "Without Communication, There Is No Development". This report analyses the achievements and strategic contributions of Latin American communication for development, demands the recognition of communication as key factor in the construction of development and democracy, and exposes the challenges that Latin American communicators face.

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Regional Latin American Report

Representatives of various Latin American organisations that are engaged in communication and committed to development gathered in Lima, Peru from August 25-27 2006. Below is a summary of the topics that were shared and reflected upon.

This report was prepared by Rosa Maria Alfaro, academic coordinator of the Latin American seminar "Without Communication, There Is No Development", on the basis of the contributions of: ALER, AMARC, ANDI, AVINA, Banco Mundial, Broederlijk Delen, Calandria, CAMECO, CESIP, CNR, COLECTIVO RADIAL FEMINISTA, Communication for Social Change Consortium, CONAM, CONCORTV, DEMUS, Equipo Uno Consultores, FAO, FELAFACS, IDL, IEC, ILLA, Iniciativa de la Comunicación, IUCM, Mesa de Comunicadores de Agencias de Cooperación, Ministerio de Salud del Perú, Observatorio de Imprensa, OCLAC, ONU, OPS, OXFAM, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Red Científica Peruana, UNICEF, USAID, Voces Nuestras, and WACC. [Please click here for more information about this seminar and the contributors to this report.]

Rosa María Alfaro
Secretaria Ejecutiva de la Veeduría Ciudadana de la Comunicación Social
maria@calandria.org.pe

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In a complex world ruled by inequality and discrimination, communication must be recognised as a specific specialty and as a key factor in building development and democracy.

1. General Considerations

Diversity and Capacity to Evaluate and Reflect

Latin America has gathered vast experience on communication for development in the last few decades. The large diversity of strategies, objectives, spaces, and operational methods have led to less simplistic and more complex interventions that symbolise new features of an auto-demanding professional activity that is unsatisfied with the view of communication as merely a tool or as the elementary production of materials.

Our accumulated experience allows us to build knowledge in both communication and development, and to link the two. Our main concern has always been to identify inequality and discrimination. Thus, the world of communication for development has seen the surge of quantitative and qualitative research on the incidence of inequality and discrimination, as well as strategic thinking which has expanded the capacity to create innovative methods and materials.

Contributions: Participation and Strategic Diversity in the Search for Change

Notwithstanding the fact that the economic development models implemented throughout history have not achieved great success, communication has allowed for meaningful and concrete progress locally and nationally; it has maintained a shared willingness in favour of citizen participation in social change, keeping an everlasting ray of hope over the future. However, the large gap between actors, territories, and dimensions of life may be the one common aspect that joins us underdeveloped countries. We endure the greatest disparity in the world. In this regard, we require more changes than our seemingly 'modernised' societies appear to have. For this reason, we do not understand why international cooperation decreases in our continent, undervaluing the existing inequities which play such an important role in development.

We have learned to work using dynamic and ever-changing strategies, defined by the attention we place in our proposals on centring them around the beneficiaries of the project - identifying them as the specific actors in development, whether children, women, young people, or members of social organisations, native communities, or other movements. We have always tried to achieve communication with the participation of the people. We believe this to be the way to arrive at commitments and motivations for change beyond the expected. In this sense, our proposals are designed to be adaptable to social and cultural characteristics, as well as to the demands for change from the people. Similarly, the various development themes that we address have played a significant role in defining interventions. At the same time, however, the quest for change has not just centred around people, but also around institutions and power centres. We have even tried to influence the mass media, creating new roads for social commitment.

Sustainable Rural Development

In the context of existing inequalities, the rural sector is the one most severely affected by unfair circumstances highlighted by poverty, abandonment, and discrimination. While the urban sector is less valued in economic terms, the visibility of the rural sector as a sector in need of urgent attention is low, and this reinforces its remoteness. Although Latin America started working in support of the rural sector with the help of FAO in the 1950s, this emphasis slowly decayed as responsibilities shifted toward governments and civil society. Projects and policies implemented, particularly those run by the State, have emphasised development, without relying on communication. This perspective is being rerouted now, with an eye toward tighter communication links in each country and making the rural world everyone's problem. There is sustainable progress now, and the communities themselves seek to participate, define their presence, and establish direct relationships with the State - hopefully thereby playing a role in the electoral process and thus guaranteeing sustainability.

2. Lessons Learned in Health

Achievements and Contributions Attained by Communication:

• Health communication has led to concerns for self-care and prevention among the population, which include seeking medical care at health centres and decreased mortality risks in various fields. It is interesting to note the UNICEF experience, which attained lower mortality rates in rural areas of countries such as Peru, using communication as one of their integral strategies. The health care demand is currently higher than the health care supply.
• Communication surveillance and lobbying have led to improvements in stateside health services for populations at higher risk, with their cooperation. This type of progress has been most noteworthy in impoverished areas in Andean countries, motivated by public pressure that grew from communication within civil society.
• Behaviour changes under difficult or urgent health situations have been possible thanks to communication and citizen mobilisation. This has been the case with the cholera epidemic in Peru, the HIV/AIDS networks, and campaigns focusing on prevention and homophobia issues in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. Changes in citizens' perspectives have also been achieved through producing and broadcasting soap operas on the radio (and some via video) on health and sexuality in Central America, particularly in Costa Rica.
• Communities have shown a tendency to participate in health centre activities by making decisions, assuming responsibility over certain activities, and suggesting changes. This trend has been observed both in the rural and in the urban sectors. Participative communication throughout the continent results in committed citizens, thus transforming them into health actors. Community and educational radio stations play an important role in this transformation.
• Health has become an issue on the public agenda, as well as a topic for family, group, and local conversations - largely in response to programmes on the radio, in the mass media, and on the street, as well as due to health-focused partnerships with social organisations, communities, and the public. Mass media today, such as what exists in Peru and Colombia, approach these issues more frequently than ever. Some media have already assumed the health agenda as part of their commitment to development (for example, El Comercio newspaper in Peru and El Tiempo in Colombia). In Brazil, children's health is a common topic among journalists and media. Public health journalism has been able to make changes in this field due to the commitment of public and private universities.
• Traditional strategies in health communication are changing day by day. Work is no longer conducted using simplistic strategies; nor do we observe only superficial quantitative impacts. A quest for quality and effectiveness is now in progress.

Challenges:

• Increasing dialogue and agreements at the national level among various sectors and topics is key because the intervention arena is large, there is a great deal of fragmentation, and there are too few links among the various topics and approaches.
• Publicly legitimising sexuality-related health topics tends to cause public resistance within the media and society.
• Upholding the rights of citizens to a public education in health and instilling a respect for disease problems and situations.
• Allowing for communication to be a regular and continued practice among health personnel, accomplished through training and meetings.
• Conducting research to allow us to see subjective, individual, and collective perceptions related to health, and to learn how to deal with them in order to guide our work.

Recommendations:

• Medical personnel should regard the beneficiary not as a patient, but as a health citizen. S/he is not only an individual with rights, but also a leading actor/actress, capable of changes regarding his/her own health and influencing other people's health.
• Highlight the importance of the cultural aspect of health, paying more respect to diversity and the changes that emerge due to diverse perspectives. That is, recognise health from its own components and think of health beyond the single, more "scientific" or Western point of view.
• Keep participation as the axis of health work, not only in terms of opinions but also with respect to the decision making process. Participation must operate not only from the central level on down, but also at the regional and local levels, where health priorities are the result of specific decisions within each environment.
• During result assessment, qualitative indicators must be taken into consideration. These include change processes that people undergo, changes in the process of communication, and the richness of the contents of the involved stories.
• The dialogue process must involve different actors, not only at the central government level but also from various organisations - including institutions, the general population, and the most vulnerable citizens.
• Disseminate among all health and cooperation professionals the various communication models and practices to be established, helping them define - in a different way - their communication priorities toward economic investment and human resources. The goal is to involve specific institutional reasoning in the attainment of changes.
• The communication intervention should be made up of comprehensive, encompassing intervention strategies.

3. Democratic GOVERNABILITY in the Works

Achievements and Contributions of Communication:

• Our work has shown that making democracy prevail in our society is a goal, not just a theme, of development, Change cannot take place without it. At the same time, relations are built to encourage the interest and participation of the population in development actions. The aim is to achieve a democratic governability, one which is communicative and efficient in terms of effecting change. Thus, development becomes a public concern for many - not to be limited to infrastructure work but, rather, to signify the beginning of a broader shift in perspective toward the defense of life and equity.
• Great emphasis has been placed on the issue of governability in Latin America, widening the scope of action to five axes of intervention: communication in democracy, social control over public power, deliberating public opinion, the role of public communication, and media democratisation. There is a consensus around the idea that democracy and development are not possible without adequate communication; many civil society organisations have committed efforts to this effect.
• A wide array of creative and publicly successful experiences have been conducted, such as citizen journalism (Colombia and Peru), media watch (Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Venezuela), and citizens' watch (Peru); all of these have managed to establish relationships among citizens, the ruling class, journalists, and media. This has made communication democratic and has laid the legal foundation for a transparent communicative relationship designed to contribute to development. The creation of laws to access information in Mexico and Peru, for example, worked well in this respect.
• Some topics were successfully placed on the public agenda for deliberation, establishing an influential relationship over national and local government, who were forced to pay attention to urgent social problems. When public debate occurs, development topics become more prominent and decisions become more thought-out and opinions are better publicly supported. This was achieved in Peru on health topics, and with regard to the relationships between the rulers and the people. In Colombia, a similar achievement took place regarding electoral processes.
• Communication contributes to the de-centralisation process, which in turn is highly meaningful for decision making for specific development. It allows for a local and regional citizen's watch and local surveillance of the media.
• Legislation that promotes or demands citizen participation on the act of governing helps to achieve the goals of development and brings about better relationships between the ruling class and the people. Radio and television by-laws in several countries are currently working towards this; some have been successful, as in Peru, while some are currently on the road to success, such as in Mexico.

Challenges:

• Getting the government and the economic sector to release information, thus allowing all of society access to that information and the capacity to remain vigilant in monitoring government systems.
• Issuing public policies for communication for development, requiring that political parties and the ruling class both understand them and use them whenever appropriate.
• Passing legislation that promotes or requires citizen participation in government, which helps political change and guides citizen decisions towards development goals. This must be placed in the limelight.
• Designing better communication strategies should become a key indicator for the election of candidates during political elections.
• Making proposals for better use of government media, as far as its goal and public management. Government media should be responsible for building the concept of citizenship and redefining democracy as committed to development.
• Defining public communication policies in favour of governability, for public officials and political parties, with the participation of links between the ruling class and the people, as a fundamental aspect in development.
• Influencing universities to graduate communicators that are well-trained for democratic political action and governability.

Recommendations:

• Establish that the permanent practice of pluralism and debate become the central communication criterion to allow for common agreements, as well as disagreements. (This is not about creating antagonism, but about being all-inclusive.) Citizens' watch of media and government, supported in a widespread public debate, should be promoted.
• Place development in the public agenda with regard to the relationship between communication and development, working on financial support policies in this regard.
• Think about and guide the relationship between communication and democratic development, through widespread and creative participation and social mobilisation.
• Clearly define the communication traits that a truly democratic official should have. Similarly, define the bases for public democratic media functions.

4. Mid-Term and Long-Term Sustainability

Achievements and Contributions:

• Communication does have a history. It has played an important role in Latin America to revert repression and inequity, widening and defining a course of action. It has helped to build consensus among various sectors of society, thus guaranteeing sustainability. Gender equity has been a successful axis in development, increasing women’s participation in different aspects of life, including political participation (throughout Latin America), as well as the inclusion of children's rights (UNICEF in some countries, ANDI in Brazil).
• Poverty reduction has been identified as a priority on this continent and it has even achieved sustained media coverage by some countries. Conflicts between some mining companies and other energy-related organisations have provided a great opportunity to create awareness about people living in economic poverty and their rightful demands, through campaigning (Oxfam International) or the search for direct and understanding dialogue between both parties. This has received journalistic and political support (ombudsman offices) and has resulted in partnerships, which led to economic and corporate support to resolve the local problems of economic poverty (areas in Peru).
• Communication has highlighted the role played by culture and people's subjective perceptions in development, allowing for changes that take these perceptions into consideration. Illustrations include the case of radio soap operas (Central America) and comic books (Peru) that reach large segments of the population.
• Communication is understood as a set of multiple strategies, different types of media, and various social influences, all of which increase its capacity to influence people in favour of equity and dialogue. In this regard, the capacity to design, assess and encompass achievements and lead the process has been developed. Strategies that were built from diverse components have achieved a higher level of success.
• Communication alliances have gone beyond territorial borders, with a high value placed on continental communication and information networks. Through these networks, the sharing of experiences and assessments is indeed improving the capacity and quality of the communication intervention.
• Community and educational media have connected to social movements, forming alliances with them, and from there the media have partnered with other institutions, thus increasing their area of influence. These media are being heard, and the topics generate family and local communication meetings with social influence, particularly in the rural areas.
• Citizen participation is a key factor in attaining good results in social changes. Sustainability is, then, maintained by the population itself, who is interested and involved in development through communication strategies.

Challenges:

• Development proposals, particularly those that arise from rural areas, lack public visibility. Conditions must be created for all the actors to learn from and debate these proposals and create an agenda for development. In the political arena, there is a need to build another model of "country-development", with actors who communicate with each other and build consensus. In order to achieve this, we need to get people to uphold this need.
• Increased specialisation of topics has led to the partition of interventions, with communication becoming a secondary appendix. To avoid this, we must "cross-cut" communication, to recover its communicative and linking function.
• Relations among Latin Americans on the continent are an important challenge to take forward. We must keep open and motivating spaces for exchanging and assessing practices and experiences from different countries. Similarly, a permanent means of communication must be sustained with cooperating organisations.
• It is important to strengthen the participation of actors and their communication capabilities, to generate dialogue, and to instil a feeling of social inclusion. Through this process, actors will become empowered and generate communities capable of conducting their own transformation processes.
• Although significant progress has been made to understand the association between communication, culture, and development, we must work on fine-tuning this approach and programming it as social and cultural capital toward development.
• We need communication to create a link between different people and organisations working on different projects which are identified as important pieces of the development field or agenda.
• We need to reduce poverty as a key factor in development.

Recommendations:

• The views of communication for sustained development must respond to mid-term projects, with an eye to the future. Negotiations should be conducted with the international cooperation entities for long-term sustainability toward regional and local development. Permanent communication between the North and the South is a necessary communication platform at both global and local levels.
• Develop our own agenda for communication and development, as part of our own definition, and trigger dialogue around this definition between civil society, cooperation agencies and the government.
• The sustained development agenda must bring forth the challenge for intercultural dialogue that addresses the diversity existing in Latin America. This is why the term "Multiple-Approach Development" is used. This proposal must become real by means of achievements and results.
• We need to achieve participation of various actors in the definition of public communication policies for development, as well as in the implementation of these policies. These public policies should be used to influence and sustain communication that is strategically linked to sustained development.
• Empower the rural sector, and those deprived of access to communications, to communicate. Participation in the media and ownership of media is important. It is also important for the rural sector to be known at the national level through mass media and communication networks.
• Promote communication as a tool to favour dialogue and negotiation in order to avoid reducing development to a mere economic dimension.

5. COMMUNICATION MEANS: A New Perspective of Change

Achievements and Contributions:

• Alternative communication - including educational and community radio stations and other media - continues to promote citizen participation, bringing up topics of development and stimulating opposition to social inequalities and political verticality.
• In addition to the media, communication spaces of citizen movements are an expression of participation and public impact. There are several experiences and concrete achievements in this area. Pressure on city officials and consensus among the population has been achieved, such is the case of Citizen Caravans in Peru. A culture of deliberation is being formed.
• Some initiatives currently focus on influencing mass media to get them to open up and include development topics in their agenda. This strategy has led to good results in several countries. Along these lines, training is being provided to journalists from different media on different topics, as well as in public journalism. Examples include ANDI in Brazil, Fundación para un Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano in Colombia and citizen journalism in Medellin, Colombia and Peru.
• Progress has been made in some countries with regard to the legal basis for information transparency, demand for high-quality information, and production of and adherence to ethical codes. Functions and responsibilities have been more clearly defined for the media (public and private), and ethical codes are being created in the media by sector (e.g., Council of Press and Citizen Watch - both in Peru). Participative regulations and self-regulations allow for clear and better definitions and demands with regard to mass media.
• Innovative edutainment in mass media often poses questions to people and family regarding attitudes and commitments, leading to social changes (e.g., Citurna Producciones sobre TV Infantil in Colombia). Progress has also been noted in educational soap operas for development, mentioned above. Interventions are being conducted not only at the informational level, but in the formational aspect, as well.

Challenges:

• Encouraging study and public consideration on new and old development models, given the current lack of knowledge. Identifying the models currently under application and evaluating their efficacy. A conceptual framework and operating procedures are needed.
• By having undergone a development model which did not take into consideration the involved populations, Latin America is now lacking direction. Public debate on this issue is thus important and must be achieved with the support of the media.
• Increasing the capabilities of alternate media, from assessments to recommendations, that might lead to social change. The goal is to produce sustainable communication projects that guide the practices of these alternate media.
• Little knowledge or debate is available on media reception. Ratings only respond to simplistic tuning methodologies and not to impact or credibility. We need new methods that measure qualitative and quantitative results fairly.
• Creating areas for debate on the importance of mass media and evaluating their possibilities of change, in light of the experiences that Latin America is undergoing.

Recommendations:

• Clearly distinguish participatory communication for development from institutional publicity or propaganda, particularly at the political level. The first one leads to thinking and changing through dialogue and the second one leads to persuading and enchanting.
• All communication proposals must operate under the assumption that communication is everybody's right. They should be based on dialogue that expresses diversity, guarantees plurality, and places topics of public interest on the agenda.
• Public policies for communication for development must be proposed jointly with the government or in an attempt to influence them, focusing on the social actors as the co-managers of development from a participatory perspective (that of the citizens).
• Communication must be seen as a social process that promotes dialogue and networking among the members of a society.
• Research should be conducted on communication activities, analysing the impact and models of communication required for social change, according to the demands that arise.
• Citizens' watches on the media and on communication and development processes should be maintained and increased.
• There is a need to create international observatories of media and communication processes for development that have impact on a continental level and that search for necessary links.
• There is a need to create a follow-up and continued exchange mechanism in the region for participatory communication for development-related issues after the Congress in Rome.

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Pulse Poll

Understanding the information and communication needs of people living in economic poverty is vital for development progress.

Do you agree or disagree?

[For context, please see The Drum Beat #367]

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This issue of The Drum Beat is based on translations from Calandria and La Iniciativa de la Comunicación.

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